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pum 





It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; 
but ye have made it a den of thieves .—Matthew 21: /j. 












IF CHRIST CAME TO CHICAGO 


A Plea for the Union of All Who Love in 
the Service of All Who Suffer 


“Said Christ our Lord, I will go and see 
How the men, My brethren, believe in Me.” 

—L owell. 



WILLIAM T. STEAD 

n 


Copyright, 1894, by Wm. T. Stead 
(all rights reserved) 



CHICAGO 




Laird & Lee, Publishers 
1894 


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Eight-Hour Herald, 

CHICAGO. 


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CONTENTS 


*• 

I' 

<v>*. 


PREFACE. 

PART I.—The Images Ye Have Made of Me, 

I.—In Harrison Street Police Station. 

II.—Maggie Darling. 

III. —Whisky and Politics. 

IV. —The Chicagoan Trinity. 

V. —“Who Are the Disreputables?” 

VI.—The Nineteenth Precinct of the First 
Ward 

PART II. — Christ''s Metewand in Chicago. 

I.—I WAS AN HUNGRED AND Ye GAVE Me MEAT. 

II.—The Sheep and the Goats. 

PART III — Satan's Invisible World Displayed. 

I.—The Boodlers and the Boodled. 

II.— The Tyranny of the Assyrian. 

III. —Dives the Tax Dodger. 

IV. —Gambling and Party Finance. 

V. —The Scarlet Woman. 


9 




CONTENTS—Continued. 


PART IV. — Christ''s Church in Chicago. 

I.—The Churches of the Sects. 

II. —The Church, Catholic and Civic. 

III. —Mayor Hopkins. 

IV. —Bishop Brennan and His Secular Clergy. 

V.—How the Oracle is Worked. 

VI. —The Watchmen of the City. 

PART V. — What Would Christ Do in Chicago? 

I.—The Conscience of Chicago. 

II. —Lead Us Not Into Temptation ! 

III. —Casting Out Devils. 

IV. —The Brotherhood of Labor. 

V. —Who is My Neighbor? 

VI. —In the Twentieth Century. 

VII. — A Closing Word. 


APPENDICES. 

(a)—H ouses of Ill-Fame and Their Owners. 

(£)—The Central Relief Association. 

(c)—S ome Curiosities of Chicago Assessments. 

(of)—T he Federation of Ministers of Religion. 

( e ) —The Civic Federation of Chicago. 

(/)—What the London County Council has Done for Labor. 


xo 




PREFACE. 


“ If Christ came to Chicago ! ” It was under this title 
that, after a month’s sojourn in the city, I summoned a Con¬ 
ference in the Central Music Hall, which was held in No¬ 
vember, 1893. Nothing was further from my thoughts at 
that time than publishing a book on Chicago. The impres¬ 
sion produced by the Conference was so remarkable that I 
promised to print a report of the proceedings, with an 
appendix, and for that purpose contracted with a firm of 
stenographers for a verbatim report of the speeches. The 
stenographers, however, failed to supply the promised report, 
and I returned to Chicago to see what could be done. 

My second visit to Chicago occurred at a critical time. 
The pressure of the problem of the unemployed was begin¬ 
ning to be severely felt; the movement in favor of a Civic 
Federation, initiated at the conference at the Central 
Music Hall, was entering into the region of realized fact; the 
American Federation of Tabor was about to meet in the 
city; the trial of Prendergast, the slayer of Carter Harrison, 
and of Dan Coughlin, for the murder of Dr. Cronin, were 
in progress; and, more important than all else, Mr. Hopkins, 
the rising young Democrat, was entering the field as 
candidate for the mayoralty, then temporarily held by Mr. 
Swift. For three months I was an intensely interested 
spectator of the rapidly unfolding drama of civic life in the 
great city which has already secured an all but unquestioned 
primacy among the capitals of the New World. 

This little volume, originally projected as a mere reprint 
of the proceedings of a Sunday’s conference, has assumed 
its present shape as the result of much consultation with 


11 



12 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

many of the leading citizens of Chicago, who have been 
kind enough to encourage its publication. It is based upon 
the carefully collected opinions of the ablest and most 
respected residents, which have been collated and com¬ 
pared with the opinions of other residents as able perhaps, 
but who unfortunately are neither respected nor respect¬ 
able. Throughout all my work of interrogation and con¬ 
densation I have clung to the hypothesis which forms the 
keynote and the starting point of the whole: “If Christ 
came to Chicago ! ’ ’ 

I have discussed the question with ministers of all 
religions and with the avowed unbelievers, with bankers and 
merchant princes, with the keepers of saloons, and even 
with the madames whose infamous calling has not entirely 
obliterated the Divine image which is the heritage of every 
child of man. It has been a strangely interesting and most 
suggestive discussion. To men of the world, to busy ad¬ 
ministrators, to labor agitators, to the crook and to the 
harlot, the question: “ If He came to Chicago, what would 
He think of us and of our lives ? ’ ’ was often strangely 
unfamiliar, and sometimes provoked the most incongruous 
replies. “We take no stock in Christ in Chicago ! '* said 
one man. “ He was all very well nineteen hundred years 
ago in Judea, but what have we to do with him in civic 
life in Chicago ? ” Not much, it is to be feared—‘ ’tis true, 

’tis pity, and pity ’tis ’tis true.’’ But, although there was 
sometimes a disposition to scoff at this insistence on the 
presence of the Son of Man, even in the precincts of the 
Board of Trade, the conception grew in power and in influ¬ 
ence, and I often marveled to note the effect which the 
thought produced even on the most hardened and vicious. 
It might only be temporary, as most things are in this 
transitory world, but it was well if even for a moment some 
ray of Divine light should lighten the darkened soul with 
a passing vision of the love of God. For Christ, even 


Preface. 13 

to those who use His name but to garnish their profane and 
filthy talk, still represents the most majestic and the most 
pathetic of all the conceptions which Man has formed of 
God. In the bleared eyes of the besotted drunkard, and in 
the dazed and despairing heart of the fallen woman, there 
was a recognition of the infinite love and tender sympathy 
which, long since, became man in order to interpret God. 
Christ, even to those who regarded him as a myth, is at 
least an accepted standard of ideal character, shining out 
luminous as the sun against the dark and gloomy back¬ 
ground of human society as it is. The fascination of the 
popular conception of the Christ is His intense human¬ 
ness. It is not as the Judge of all the earth, nor as the 
Second Person in the Divine Trinity, that He appeals to the 
common .people. Christ is to them the Man of Sorrows, 
who w T as tempted in all points even as we; the Divine tramp, 
who said of himself, ‘ ‘ the foxes have holes and the birds of 
the air have nests, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay 
His head; ” the heretic and outcast who supped and made 
merry with winebibbers, who came eating and drinking, and 
was called a gluttonous man, a friend of publicans and sin¬ 
ners. Christ was and is to the common man merely his 
own highest self, radiant with Divine love, suffused with 
infinite compassion. That idea of a perfect standard of 
right and wrong, applied by One who has a sympathy 
that never fails, because based upon an understanding of 
all the facts, can never be forgotten without loss, or ignored 
without peril. 

“ Oh, Christ is all right!” said one poor girl on Fourth Ave¬ 
nue, “it is the other ones that are the devil.” And she 
spoke a bitter truth. For He dwells in us but partially, and 
that which is in us without Him is carnal, earthly and 
devilish in sad reality. But the thought of Him recalls the 
ideal, and by applying that ideal to the actual circumstances 
of the civic life of Chicago, men realized more clearly how 


14 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

far short they had come of carrying out His will. To very 
many the conception of the Citizen Christ was so new as 
almost to be distasteful. To them it appeared at first almost 
as some strange heresy that the Son of Man could have 
either part or lot in such mundane institutions as munici¬ 
palities and primaries. But by degrees it began to dawn 
upon those who pondered the matter in their hearts that the 
Churches, by insisting so exclusively upon the other life, 
have banished Him from His own world, and by the substi¬ 
tution of Divine Worship for Human Service have largely 
undone the work of the Incarnation. To re-enforce this 
growing sentiment, to strengthen this dawning conscious¬ 
ness of the reality of the Citizen Christ, this book is given 
to the world. Whatever value it possesses, whatever help 
there is in it for the citizens of Chicago, or of any other 
city, will depend solely upon the fidelity with which I have 
succeeded in expressing the mind of Christ on the subjects 
which it treats, and of bringing those who read its pages 
within the shadow of the presence of the Son of Man. 

The original conception of Christ coming to Chicago 
reached me, like most of my religio-philosophical notions, 
through the poetry of James Russell Dowell. The short 
poem which he styled a parable always seems to me to 
sum up in a page the vital essence of Christ’s teaching. It 
is as it were a new chapter of the Gospel of St. John, done 
into English by the American poet-seer of the nineteenth 
century. I quote it here as the best explanation of the 
title of this book. 

Said Christ our Lord, “ I will go and see 
How the men, My brothers, believe in Me.” 

He passed not again through the gate of birth, 

But made Himself known to the children of earth. 

Then said the chief priests, and rulers and kings, 

“ Behold, now, the Giver of all good things ; 

Go to, let us welcome with pomp and state 
Him who alone is mighty and great.” 


Preface . 15 

With carpets of gold the ground they spread 
Wherever the Son of Man should tread, 

And in palace-chambers lofty and rare 

They lodged Him, and served him with kingly fare. 

Great organs surged through arches dim 
Their jubilant floods in praise of Him ; 

And in church, and palace, and judgment-hall 
He saw His image high over all. 

But still, wherever His steps they led, 

The Lord in sorrow bent down His head, 

And from under heavy foundation stones 
The Son of Mary heard bitter groans. 

And in church, and palace, and judgment-hall 
He marked great fissures that rent the wall, 

And open wider and yet more wide 

As the living foundation heaved and sighed. 

“Have ye founded your thrones and altars, then, 

On the bodies and souls of living men? 

And think ye that building shall endure 
Which shelters the noble and crushes the poor ? 

‘ ‘ With gates of silver and bars of gold 

Ye have fenced My sheep from the Father’s fold ; 

I have heard the dropping of their tears 
In heaven these eighteen hundred years.” 

“ O Ford and Master, not ours the guilt; 

We build but as our fathers built; 

Behold Thine images, how they stand, 

Sovereign and sole, through all our land. 

“ Our task is hard, with sword and flame 
To hold Thy earth forever the same, 

And with .sharp crooks of steel to keep, 

Still, as Thou leftest them, Thy sheep.” 

Then Christ sought out an artisan, 

A low-browed, stunted, haggard man; 

And a motherless girl, whose fingers thin 
Pushed from her faintly want and sin. 

These set He in the midst of them, 

And as they drew back their garments-hem, 

For fear of defilement, “Lo, here,” said He, 

“ The images ye have made of Me.” 

As this poem suggested the title, so it has inspired every 
page in this book. The dominant idea which L,owell 
insisted upon is the truth which, more than any other, is 


16 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

needed to inspire and vivify our impotent, limp and 
ineffective conception of Christianity. How we believe in 
Christ is shown not by what we say about Him, nor by the 
temples which we build in His honor, nor by the hymns which 
we sing in His praise, but by the extent to which we succeed 
in restoring in man the lost image of God. The tramp is 
Christ’s brother, the harlot is Christ’s sister. These are 
the images which we have made of Christ. As the strength 
of a chain is tested by its weakest link, so the extent of our 
failure to save the least of these, His brethren, may be 
illustrated by the actual condition of those who are lost. 

When once this idea is clearly and firmly grasped, when 
the condition of our fellow citizens is recognized as the test 
of the measure of our faith in Christ, the religious aspect 
of civic politics acquires a new and supreme importance. 
For the improvement of the lot of the least of these, 
Christ’s brethren, the assistance of the municipal authority 
is indispensable. The law must be invoked, if only as the 
schoolmaster, to bring men to Christ. Before we can make 
men divine, we must cast out the devils who are brutalizing 
them out of even human semblance. But this cannot be ac¬ 
complished excepting by the use of means, which can 
only be wielded by the City Council. Hence, as it used to 
be said of old time that all roads lead to Rome, so the more 
attentively we study the way out of our social quagmire, 
the more clearly will it be discerned that all roads lead to 
the City Hall. Thus it has come to pass that this little 
volume, begun with the simple object of recalling the con¬ 
ception of the Man Christ Jesus, has developed into an 
attempt to illustrate how a living faith in the Citizen Christ 
would lead directly to the civic and social regeneration of 
Chicago. 

William T. Stead. 

Commerce Club, 

Auditorium Building, Feb. 24, 1894. 


IF CHRIST CAME TO CHICAGO! 


PART I. — Some Images Ye Have Made of Me. 


CHAPTER I. 

IN HARRISON STREET POLICE STATION. 

“In the name of that homeless wanderer in this 
desert of stone and steel, whose hopeless heart lies leaden 
in his bosom, whose brain grows faint for want of food 
— in the name of that unnecessary product of American 
freedom and prosperity, the American tramp, I bid 
you welcome to the Imperial City of the boundless 
West.” So spoke William C. Pomeroy, Vice-President of 
the Trade and Labor Assembly, on behalf of the labor 
unions of Chicago, to the convention of the American 
Federation of Labor which assembled at Chicago in last 
December. 

He but expressed in his own vivid way some of the 
bitterness of discontent which all men felt in Chicago 
last winter. 

Among “the images which ye have made of Me,” the 
tramp is one of the most unattractive, and in December 
he was everywhere in evidence. The approach of win¬ 
ter drove him from the fields to seek shelter in the 
towns, which were already overburdened with their own 
unemployed. Like the frogs in the Egyptian plague, 
you could not escape from the tramps, go where you 
would. In the city they wandered through the streets, 
seeking work and finding none. At night if they had 


17 




18 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

failed in begging the dime which would secure them a 
lodging they came together in three great herds, pre¬ 
senting a sad spectacle of squalid misery and forlorn 
manhood. These nocturnal camps of the homeless 
nomads of civilization were all in the center of the city. 
Of these the most wretched was that which was pitched 
in Harrison Street Police Station. 

The foot-sore, leg-swollen tramp who had wandered 
all day through the city streets, looking more or less 
aimlessly for work or food, sought shelter at night 
wherever he could find a roof to shelter him and warmth 
to keep the frost out of his bones. Some kenneled in 
empty trucks on the railway sidings, rejoicing even in a 
fireless retreat; others crept into the basement of saloons, 
or coiled themselves up in outhouses, but the bulk of 
them were accommodated in the police stations, in the 
Pacific Garden Mission and in the City Hall. Such 
improvised shelters were all the appliances of civiliza¬ 
tion which Chicago in the year of the World’s Fair had 
to offer to the homeless out-of-works. 

There is something dreary and repelling about a 
police station even in the least criminal districts. But 
Harrison Street Station stands in the midst of darkest 
Chicago. Behind the iron bars of its underground 
cages are penned up night after night scores and hun¬ 
dreds of the most dissolute ruffians of both sexes that 
can be raked up in the dives of the levee. 

The illuminated clock of the tower at the depot shines 
dimly through the frosty smoke-mist, as a kind of beacon 
light guiding the tramp toward his destined haven. 
Down Harrison Street, trailing his weary, shambling legs 
over the dirty snow, he crosses in succession the great 
arterial thoroughfares through which the city’s mis¬ 
cellaneous tide of human life runs loud and fast, until 
he sees the road barred by the horizontal pole and the 
spot of green light which arrests traffic across the grade 
crossing of the railway. The bell of the locomotive 
rings without ceasing, keeping up its monotone as if 


In Harrison Street Police Station. 19 

relays of sextons were tolling for the victims who that 
day, as every day, had been slaughtered on the tracks. 
A patrol wagon full of officers and prisoners drives up 
to the brick building at the corner of Harrison Street 
and Pacific Avenue and begins to unload. The occur¬ 
rence is too familiar even to attract a passing loafer. 
The cold and frost-keen wind makes even the well 
clothed shiver. The tramp hesitates no longer. He 
pulls open the door of the station and asks for shelter. 

Harrison Street Police Station is one of the nerve 
centers of criminal Chicago. The novelist who had at 
command the life story of those who, in a single week, 
enter this prim brick building surrounded by iron pal¬ 
ings, would never need to draw on his imagination for 
incident, character, plot, romance, crime—every ingredi¬ 
ent he could desire is there ready to hand, in the terrible 
realism of life. For the station is the central cesspool 
whither drain the poisonous drippings of the city which 
has become the cloaca maxhna of the world. Chicago 
is one of the most conglomerate of all cosmopolitan cities, 
and Harrison Street Police Station receives the scum of 
the criminals of Chicago. It is also the great receiving 
house where the police and the bailsmen and the justices 
temporarily pen the unfortunate women who are raided 
from time to time “ for revenue only,” of which they 
yield a goodly sum to the pockets of the administrators 
of “justice.” 

The cells, if they may be called such, are in the base¬ 
ment, half underground. They resemble the cages of 
wild beasts in a menagerie. There are two short corri¬ 
dors into which the cages open on the right and left, 
while the remaining corridors have only cages on one 
side, the other being the stone wall. The floor is of stone. 
I11 each cell there is one bench on which the first comers 
can sit while the others stand. An open gutter at the 
back provides the only sanitary accommodation. One 
policeman and one police matron are in command. 
Each of the corridors is closed by an iron barred gate. 


20 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

The place is lit with gas and is warm, but the atmos¬ 
phere is heavy, sometimes fetid, and the cages and corri¬ 
dors reek with associations of vice and crime. 

Into this criminal stock pot of the city the homeless 
tramps were thrown to stew in their own juice together 
with the toughs and criminals and prostitutes, the 
dehumanized harvest nightly garnered by the police of 
the district. 

It is true that the tramps were not mixed indiscrim¬ 
inately with the criminals. The women, for instance, 
were kept in their own corridor. The prisoners were 
in the cages behind the barred gates, the tramps slept 
in the corridor between the cages and the wall. There 
was, however, nothing to hinder the freest possible 
communication between the arrested men and the casual 
lodgers. Conversation went on freely between the 
tramps and the toughs and occasional interchange of 
papers and tobacco went on easily through the bars 
of the cages. 

The place had a weird fascination about it. It is not 
a locality where a very sensitive psychic could live, for 
its cages have witnessed the suicide of desperate prisoners 
who, while the jailer’s back was turned, hanged them¬ 
selves to death from the bars behind which they were 
imprisoned. Murderers red-handed have lodged there, 
maniacs have battered their heads against the iron gates, 
for there is no strait waistcoat or padded cell in Harrison 
Street; women shriek and wail in hysterics, and, saddest 
of all, little urchins of ten and twelve who have been 
run in for some juvenile delinquency have found the 
police cell the nursery cradle of the jail. Sometimes 
when the Justice needs dollars, and raids are ordered 
in scores that the bail bonds may be paid, there are 
two hundred women crowded into the cells. Many of 
them are drunk before they come in, others get drunk 
after they arrive, having carefully provided for that 
contingency before they mounted the patrol wagon; all 
of them, the novice in the sporting house, as well as 


In Harrison Street Police Statio?i. 21 

the hardened old harridan who drives the trade in 
human flesh, are herded together promiscuously with 
thieves and shoplifters. 

They smoke, they drink, they curse, they yell ob¬ 
scenely, and now and then one goes into a fit of hysterical 
shrieking which rings through the gloomy corridors like 
the wail of a damned and tortured soul. 

One night when I was there a French woman was 
brought in with her man. There had been a quarrel; 
her face was streaming with blood, she had been drink¬ 
ing and was in violent hysterics. I have seldom seen a 
more squalid specimen of human wretchedness. When 
they separated her from her companion, placing them in 
separate cells, she began to shriek at the top of her 
voice — and a shrill voice it was. She clung to the 
bars of the cage shrieking for Jacques, only stopping 
when she had to wipe away the blood that was flowing 
from her mouth and temple. She was shrieking and 
wailing with unabated energy when I left. The police 
matron told me that she kept it up for some time before 
she sank exhausted to sleep. Early in the morning 
she woke and at once began again the agonized cry and 
kept it up for two hours. Such was the music and such 
the companionship which were allotted to the lodgers at 
Harrison Street. 

That was bad enough. But if the city had provided 
adequate accommodation for her lodgers even in this 
underground Inferno, there might be less to be said. 
Unfortunately, however, there was no accommodation 
other than the stone floor of the corridor and there the 
casuals were pigged together literally like herrings in a 
barrel. The corridor was some hundred feet long and 
ten feet broad. I shall never forget the moment when 
I first saw it with its occupants. From the outer iron 
gate to the further wall, nothing could be seen but a 
pavement of human bodies. The whole corridor was 
packed thick with this human compost. They lay 
“heads and tails,” so that their feet and legs were inter- 


22 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

mingled. At either end some favored ones propped 
themselves against the wall or the gate, drowsily 
slumbering. The majority lay on their sides with their 
heads on their arms; some had taken off their coats ; 
many had prepared their bed by spreading an old news¬ 
paper upon the stone floor; other mattress they had none, 
neither had they pillow, bed clothes, or opportunities for 
washing or for supper. The city, like a stony-hearted 
step-mother, provided for her children nothing but 
shelter, warmth and a stone bed. 

The spectacle of these human beings massed together 
along the corridor floor, recalled vividly to my memory 
a picture in an old Sunday School book, representing 
the Caliph of Islam riding over the prostrate forms of 
his devoted followers. But in the Moslem there was the 
enthusiasm and ecstacy of self sacrifice, the joy of the 
disciple at being made the causeway of the Commander 
of the Faithful. Here there were the bodies indeed, 
but there was no joy of surrender, only a sullen stone- 
broke resignation as they bowed themselves and laid 
down and let the iron-shod hoofs of Eaissez Faire and 
Political Economy trample them to the dust. It was 
an ugly sight. 

Only once had I seen anything like it outside the pic¬ 
ture book. It was when I was in one of the worst 
prisons in St. Petersburg. The officials demurred rather 
to let me enter, but ultimately gave way and with many 
apologies allowed me to see the inmates of the House of 
Detention, where the riffraff of the capital were herded 
together to await the weekly clearing which dispersed 
them to Siberia or to the four winds of heaven. Only in 
that Russian prison had I even seen men crowded to¬ 
gether as beasts are crowded in cattle trucks. But in 
Russia they were more merciful than in Chicago. They 
at least provided a sloping wooden bed with straw pil¬ 
lows for their prisoners. But what Russian humanity 
deemed necessary even for criminals, the city of Chi-ago 


In Harrison Street Police Station. 


23 


did not vouchsafe to the honest workman tramping 
around in search of a job. 

The curious thing to a stranger was the apathetic in¬ 
difference of the sufferers themselves. They made no 
audible or articulate complaint. Their patient endur¬ 
ance, their passive acquiescence in treatment against 
which English tramps would have blasphemed till the 
air was blue, was very strange. Everything that was 
subsequently done to improve their condition was done 
from the outside, and was received by them with the 
same apparent passivity. They did not even make a 
demonstration or frame an appeal. 

Another remarkable thing was the apparent indiffer¬ 
ence of the better-to-do citizens, not merely the rich, but 
the employed working people. When, immediately 
after my arrival in Chicago, I ventured to tell the 
Trade and Labor Assembly that the workingmen of 
London would not tolerate the treatment to which the 
tramps were subjected at Harrison Street, and urged them 
to take action in the matter, this was the way in 
which a leading evening paper thought it right and safe 
to refer to the subject: 

In this self-respecting city of the West, the “cause of humanity” 
stands in no need of advice from British fanatics who base an argu¬ 
ment upon the analogy of the London pauper system. The American 
tramp is sui generis. He would not work if work were offered him. He 
deserves not the tear but the lash. We know how to deal with him. 
Mr. Stead does not. The t oe of a boot bv day and a cold stone floor 
by night—these be the leading courses in the curriculum by which we 
would educate into self-respect such tramps as are capable of it. The 
tramp is a pariah and we ought to keep him such. 

It was on the eve of a contested election, but the 
editor, although a keen partisan, never seemed to dream 
that his language might be used to the detriment of his 
party when the polls were opened. 

As a matter of fact no electoral use was made of this 
utterance by the other side. And as a matter of justice 
I should add that the same paper after a few weeks’ 
further agitation became so strenuous in its demands for 
more liberal charity in dealing with these outcasts as to 


24 


If Christ Came to Chicago. 

leave far behind it even u the maudlin sentimentalism of 
the Stead school of philanthropists. ’ ’ 

The doctrine that the American tramp is a pariah 
and that he ought to be kept such is not often formu¬ 
lated so bluntly, but it embodies the underlying doc¬ 
trine of the American method in dealing with the tramp. 
We have in England made so many failures in our 
attempts to deal with the sturdy vagrant that we have 
no pretention to teach others. But we have at least 
learned from our failures sufficient to see that to refuse 
to deal with the tramp excepting as a temporary human 
nuisance, to be hustled on to the neighboring town with 
the utmost dispatch, is the worst possible way of solving 
the question. For even if the tramp is the spawn of 
the devil, as it is constantly assumed, instead of being a 
son of God and brother of Christ Jesus, to persist in a 
practice which entails of necessity the quickest possible 
dissemination of the spawn aforesaid over the widest pos¬ 
sible area of territory is of all courses the most fatal. 
But when anything is proposed either by way of recla¬ 
mation or of redemption, there is an outcry against “ pau¬ 
perizing the citizen. ” So the work of criminalizing 
him goes on apace. 

“Oh, he’s only a bum !” was the cry which at first 
met all efforts to arouse a Christian sentiment in Chicago. 
That was supposed to settle all things. A bum was out¬ 
side the pale of human sympathy. A bum was supposed 
to possess all the defects of human nature and none of 
their virtues. He was declared to be an incorrigibly 
idle loafer, a drunkard, a liar and a reprobate. The grim 
old Calvinistic doctrine of reprobation seemed to be re¬ 
vived expressly to make his damnation irrevocable. 
And yet nothing was being done to prevent the steady 
degradation of the honest willing worker to the level of 
the bum. 

As a genial speaker at the Presbyterian Social Union 
remarked, even the most respectable of men, if compelled 
to tramp about for a week without change of linen or 


In Harrison Street Police Station. 


25 

opportunity to wash, would feel lie was becoming very 
bummy. There is of necessity, in every period of de¬ 
pression, a considerable number of men who are thrown 
out of work. These men take to the road, are driven 
to it because they have no means of transporting them¬ 
selves from a place where there is no work to a place 
where work may be had. If the present system or no 
system goes 011, they will tend irresistibly to gravitate 
to the bum pariah class, and the practice of massing 
them together in herds in Harrison Street and the City 
Hall accelerates the process. 

Take but one instance, the impossibility of keeping 
clean or free from vermin under the present conditions. 
“ You can always tell the bum,” said a justice, “ by his 
smell. There is an ancient stink about him which you 
can detect in a moment.” 

There is no greater barrier between man and man, and 
still more between woman and woman, than that raised 
by the sense of smell, with its suggestion of the pres¬ 
ence of filth. Most people can put up more readily 
with a criminal than with a filthy man. But how can 
the willing worker or tramp keep clean when he is 
pigged together with a foul-smelling herd on the floor of 
a prison? 

One night at Harrison Street I witnessed a strange 
Rembrandtesque scene. In the center of the corridor allot¬ 
ted to the tramps at Harrison Street, the men had made a 
bonfire of old paper. It was not quite so crowded as it had 
been before, and there was room in the center. They were 
diligently feeding the fire with shreds of paper. The 
blaze illuminated the dark and forbidding surroundings 
of the prison, casting a flickering glare upon the dirty, 
careworn faces that surrounded it. I asked the officer 
in charge whether he thought it was safe to allow a 
mob of men to make a bonfire on the floor of the station. 
“I don’t blame them,” said he, shortly; “I don’t 
blame them. An old bum got in there who was liter¬ 
ally alive with vermin. When they found it out we fired 


26 


If Christ Came to Chicago. 

him out, but the few papers he had been lying on were 
lifting with lice, so that is what they are burning. And 
I don’t blame them,” he repeated : “what else could 
they do ? ” 

For one man who is so verminous that the very paper 
on which he lay lifted with the insects dropped from his 
rags, there must have been scores and hundreds more or 
less haunted by the unpleasant habitues of uncombed 
hair and unwashed bodies. Their tendency is constant 
to multiplication. The longer a man goes unwashed, 
the denser becomes the colony of parasites; and the 
more closely he is compelled to herd with his neighbors, 
the more widely does the loathsome contagion spread. 
Hence the willing worker, forced into contact with the 
idle and shiftless and worthless bum, becomes himself 
bummier and bummier until at last he is branded as one 
of the pariah class and “ he must be kept such ! ” 

The Harrison Street Police Station, although the most 
conspicuous sheltering place of the outcast wanderer, held 
by no means the largest crowd. The Pacific Garden 
Mission, at Van Buren and Clark Streets, accommodated 
a larger number of homeless ones than the police station. 
The spacious hall of the mission was turned into a dor¬ 
mitory, where, night after night, some five or six hun¬ 
dred persons occupied chairs till morning. Every 
evening there was a religious service, after which the 
attendants were free to remain all night. The place 
was warm and orderly, and it had the advantage over 
Harrison Street Police Station of enabling each man to 
sleep by himself. But, as a Cheshire man told me, who 
had crossed the Atlantic many times as stoker on the trans¬ 
atlantic ferry boats and who had for some months past 
been firing steamers on Fake Michigan, it is little sleep 
you get unless you can lie down flat. The poor fellow’s 
story was very simple ; he had spent three nights in the 
mission and four days tramping round hunting work. 
He was out every morning before seven, and on his 
feet till after nine at night always meeting with the 


In Harrison Street Police Station. 


27 


same response. “ When you’re on your feet all day,” he 
said, “ and cannot get a lay-out at night, your legs swell 
almost to the knee. You become lame and cannot even 
go hunting the job no one seems able to find.” He was 
a stalwart, strapping fellow, who literally wept when a 
little friendly help was given him. But in process of 
time that man would also become a bum, unless he 
could be arrested on the down grade along which he 
was being hurried by no fault of his own. 

The great sleeping place of the tramp, however, was 
neither in Harrison Street Police Station nor in the 
Pacific Garden Mission. The heart and center of Chicago 
is the huge pile of masonry which reminds the visitor by 
its polished granite pillars and general massive and 
somber grandeur of the cathedrals and palaces of St. 
Petersburg. The City Hall and Court House form 
one immense building, in which all the city and 
county business is transacted, both judicial and admin¬ 
istrative. The peculiar system under which Chicago is 
administered makes the City Hall, in a peculiar manner, 
the center of the floating unemployed population. I have 
never seen a city hall so thronged by loafers during the 
day time. The politician out of a job, the office-seeker 
waiting impatiently for his turn, the alderman and his 
strings of hangers-on, the ex-official, the heeler, the 
jobber swell the throng of those who do business 
until the air in the corridors is heavy with smoke, and 
the pavement is filthy with the mire of innumerable 
boots and stained with the juice of the tobacco plant—for 
not even the American allowance of spittoons can suffice 
for the need of the citizens in their Civic Hall. 
This court and reception room of the sovereign people— 
where Coughlin was being tried for his life on one side, 
and the multitude were being vaccinated in droves 
on the other, while all the multitudinous wheels of 
municipal machinery revolved between—was selected 
as the chief camping-ground of the nomadic horde. 

The City Hall cost five million dollars to construct. 


28 If Christ Came to Chicago . 

It is the solitary municipal building of any pretensions 
in the city. In it are kept the city archives, the records 
of the courts, and all the documents relating to the 
registration of property and the due transaction of public 
business. Here is the headquarters of the best equipped 
and most efficient fire department in the world, and 
high overhead is the accumulated wealth of the public li¬ 
brary of Chicago. In this building, crammed with invalu- 
ble documents, the seat and center of the whole civic 
machinery, for want of any better accommodation, 
there were housed night after night, through the 
month of December, from one to two thousand of the 
most miserable men in Chicago. Most of the men 
were penniless ; almost all of them were more or less 
desperate ; many of them were smoking. As they used 
newspapers as mattresses, the corridors were littered with 
paper, amid which a single lighted match might have 
made a blaze which might not easily have been extin¬ 
guished. Yet the risk was faced perforce for want of a 
little care, a little forethought, and a little necessary 
expenditure. 

The tramps were not accommodated in the Council 
Chamber or in any of the offices. They were allowed 
to occupy the spacious, well-warmed corridors, and 
make such shift as they could upon the flags. No one 
was admitted to the upper stories, but every stair up to 
the first landing was treated as a berth by its fortunate 
occupant. Less lucky lodgers had to content them¬ 
selves with a lay-out in the corridor. They lay with 
their heads against the wall on either side, leaving open 
a narrow track down the center. Down this track 
came reporters, messengers to the fire department and 
other offices, followed before many nights were over by 
curious philanthropists, university professors, ministers 
of religion, and then by the representatives of the Fed¬ 
eration of Labor, all of whom marveled much and said 
many bitter things about the contrasts of the great city 
where “Mammon holds high carnival in its gilded 


In Harrison Street Police Station . 


29 


palaces, while little children hunger, mothers grow faint 
for food and die, and strong men weep for want of work. ” 

But after a time that narrow pathway was choked up, 
and even reporters could not elbow their way through 
the crowd ; for the City Hall corridors were very warm ; 
the midnight air was nipping keen, and when all sleep¬ 
ing room was filled men preferred to stand in the warm, 
close air, rather than shiver in the frost and snow. It 
seems strange, but it appears to be undisputed that the 
habit of allowing the homeless to shelter in the corri¬ 
dors of the City Hall is no new thing in Chicago. Indeed 
the only new thing last winter seems to have been the 
limitation of the area of improvised casual ward to the 
ground floor and the first flight of stairs. It was not 
till the 12th of last November that wire doors were 
placed on the stairs, and all access to the upper part of 
the building shut off. This necessary precaution was 
taken not in order to avoid peril by fire or pillage, but 
simply because the lodgers quarreled so fiercely among 
themselves for favorite locations that for the sake of 
peace and quiet they were stalled downstairs. There 
they were quiet enough, smoking, sleeping and doing a 
little talking in an undertone. But for a floating popu¬ 
lation with the reputation of the bum, the crowd was 
singularly quiet, patient and well behaved. In the 
Pacific Garden Mission the superintendent reported the 
presence of 500 sleepers every night had been attended 
by so little disturbance, that the upstairs tenants were 
never conscious that there was a crowd below. The 
officer in charge at Harrison Street declared that the 
genuine bum was in a greater minority than had ever 
been observed before. Most of his lodgers were hard¬ 
working men, honestly anxious to find work. 

It was, of course, impossible to do more than sample 
the mass of human wretchedness thus caged up nightly in 
a few centers, but Professor Hourwitch, with a band of 
students from the university, subjected 100 of the crowd 
of 2,000 odd to a searching analysis. His report is 


30 


If Christ Caine to Chicago. 

very interesting. Only ten of the ioo selected at 
random from the lodgers in the City Hall belonged to 
labor unions. Only two had worked for less than a 
dollar a day. More than half, sixty-four out of ioo, 
had earned from $i to $2 a day, twenty from $2 to $3. 
Almost all classes and conditions of men were repre¬ 
sented in the motley crowd — except millionaires. Fifty- 
nine were native-born Americans, forty-one foreigners. 
Of the latter the first place was taken by the Germans, 
followed by the Irish and the Scotch in the order named. 
Most of the men were in the prime of life, from twenty 
to forty-five; only one was below twenty, and four over 
fifty. Their professions or occupations, as stated by 
themselves, were as follows: Common laborers, 33; team¬ 
sters, 6; painters, 6; waiters, 5; molders, 4; bakers, 4; 
miners, 3; cooks, 3; rolling millers, 3; sailors, 3; ma¬ 
chinists, 2; cigarmakers, 2; shoemakers, 2; carpenters, 
2; wood finishers, 2; while a brickmaker, a clerk, a 
glass packer, a plumber, a florist, a varnisher, a brewer, 
a druggist, a glazier, a draftsman, a wood carver, a 
cooper, an upholsterer, a boxmaker, a stove polisher, a 
chair factory man, a steam fitter, and a salesman com¬ 
pleted the list. 

Several of the men were well educated. One was a 
graduate of the University of Nebraska. Most of them 
had come to Chicago from other towns seeking work, 
and none of them could find it. Of all the dishearten¬ 
ing occupations that of seeking work and finding none 
is one of the worst. The curse that in the Old Book 
is said to have followed the Fall is often in the New 
World an unattainable boon. It was a quaint but true 
conceit of Mrs. Browning’s that “God in cursing 
gives us better gifts, than man in blessing.” But 
whether malediction or benediction, work was what these 
men wanted, and work was the one thing they could 
not get. If they only had been horses there would 
have been men eager enough to claim them to feed, to 
lodge and to care for them. But, alas, they were only 


In Harrison Street Police Statio?i. 


3 i 


men ! Even then, if they had been slaves, liable to be 
sold at the auction mart, and whipped to work on the 
plantation, this army of 2,000 able-bodied wanderers in 
the prime of life would have probably brought at least 
a million dollars at the auction block. But as they had 
the misfortune to be free men, free citizens of the great 
republic, none would give even a nickel for their ser¬ 
vices or provide a bed in which they could shelter. 

It was a composite industrial army, capable of doing 
much good work if only it could but find leadership and 
tools and rations. All were wanting, the first most of 
all. For the loyal confidence of man in man, which is 
the tap root of all true leadership, does not spring up 
easily in the camps of the unemployed. The nomads of 
the prairie and of the steppe have more of that element 
than the nomads of civilization. Hence, if they are left 
to themselves they threaten to gravitate ever downward. 
From poverty and homelessness comes despondency, loss 
of self-respect follows on enforced dirtiness, and the 
undescribable squalor of filthy clothes. Work being 
unattainable, they beg rather than starve, and if begging 
fails they steal. Thus by steady inevitable forces, as of 
adverse Destiny, the dislodged unit gravitates downward, 
ever downward into the depths of the malebolgic pool of 
our social hell. Industry, honesty, truthfulness, sobriety 
are rotted out of the man, and at last the only remnant 
of the soul that aspires is visible in the craving after 
drink. In his cups, at least, he may drown his regrets 
for a vanished past, and may indulge for some brief 
moments in brighter visions of the unattainable to¬ 
morrow. For in the utterly demoralized tramp, the only 
symptom of the God within is often that very passion 
for drink which, by its sore intensity, testifies to the 
revolt of its victim against the injustices and abomina¬ 
tions of the present. Yet, of him, also, let us remember 
what Lowell wrote of another lost unit of the human 
family : 

The good Father of us all had doubtless intrusted to the keeping 


32 


If Christ Ca7ne to Chicago . 

of this child of His certain faculties of a constructive kind; He had put 
in him a share of that vital force, the nicest economy of every minute 
atom of which is necessary to the perfect development of humanity. 
He had given him a brain and heart, and so had equipped his soul 
with the two strong wings of knowledge and love, whereby it can 
mount to hang its nest under the eaves of heaven. And this child, 
so dowered, he had intrusted to the keeping of his vicar, the State. 
How stands the account of that stewardship? The State, or Society 
(call her what you will) had taken no manner of thought of him 
until she saw him swept out into the street, the pitiful leavings of last 
night’s debauch, with cigar ends, lemon parings, tobacco quids, 
slops, vile stenches and the whole loathsome next morning of the 
bar-room — an own child of the Almighty God ! I remember him as 
he was brought in to be christened, a ruddy, rugged babe ; and now 
there he wallows, reeking, seething — the dead corpse, not of a man 
but of a soul, a putrifying lump, horrible for the life that is in it. 
Soon the wind of heaven, that good Samaritan, parts the hair 
upon his forehead nor is too nice to kiss those parched, cracked lips; 
the morning opens upon him her eyes full of pitying sunshine, the 
sky yearns down to him, and there he lies fermenting. O sleep ! let 
me not profane thy holy name by calling that stertorous unconscious¬ 
ness a slumber ! By and by comes along the State, God’s vicar. 
Does she say, “My poor forlorn foster-child! Behold a force which I 
will make dig and plant and build for me.” Not so, but— 

let us hustle him out of the town and thank God we 
are rid of the nuisance of his presence ! 

But with at least fifty thousand able-bodied tramps 
in ordinary years patrolling the country at an esti¬ 
mated minimum cost of ten million dollars per 
annum for means of subsistence, making no esti¬ 
mate of the indirect damages to property and morals, 
it is beginning to be increasingly doubtful whether 
the popular expedient is paying in the long run. 
Of course, so long as each city or village or township bases 
its policy on the question of Cain, nothing can be done. 
But even in Russia, which so many affect to despise as 
semi-barbarous and inhuman, they do better than that. 
For there they christen their tramp a pilgrim and by 
brotherly kindness and generous hospitality convert 
every wandering brother into a means of grace. 


CHAPTER II. 

MAGGIE DARLING. 

Christ was a man. It is therefore easier to conceive 
of him as a pilgrim tramp, footsore and hungry, resting 
his weary limbs among the bums in the police station 
than to conceive of his marred image in a female shape. 
But the woman-Christ like the child-Christ, either as 
the Christ of the Dolorous Way or as the redeeming and 
regenerating Saviour is a conception which must never 
be lost sight of. 

The Christian Church, which for more than a thou¬ 
sand years has consecrated its proudest temples to the 
memory of the Magdalen, is a witness throughout the 
ages to the indestructibility of the divine element in 
every woman even when she has sunk so low as to 
make merchandise of her sex. The image of God in 
woman remains indefaceable even when in Becky’s 
words, which it is impossible to read without a shudder, 
she becomes “ the eternal Priestess of Humanity blasted 
for the sins of the people.” But although the publicans 
and harlots in His time welcomed the wandering eccen¬ 
tric from Nazareth, who shared their meals and sympa¬ 
thized with their sorrows, the conventional sentiment of 
this day would stand aghast at any such intermingling 
of the Messiah with the lost women whom He came to 
seek and to save. 

In Chicago some people have gone even further. One 
of the most zealous and faithful of the saintly and de¬ 
voted women who have dedicated their lives to the ser¬ 
vice of the fallen told me with a heart sore with the an¬ 
guish of thwarted sympathy, that so far from her efforts 
being supported by the Church, they were regarded as a 
development not to be encouraged. 


33 


34 


If Christ Came to Chicago . 

“ It was this way,” she said. “ I have given myself 
up to this work. I visited constantly in the levee and 
knew most of these women as friends. Now and then 
I would come upon one or another girl who would long 
to escape from her sad life. When I found such I took 
them into my own house, loved them, labored with 
them, and I rejoice to know that several of them be¬ 
came happy and converted Christians. I was pleased, 
my pastor was pleased. The penitent Magdalens were 
received into the church and we were glad to see their 
simple faith and Christian life. But a deputation of 
the leading residents and church officers waited upon my 
pastor to protest against this kind of thing. They did not 
want their daughters to associate with harlots even though 
they were repentant. Besides the presence of these women 
would lower the character of the neighborhood and the 
social standing of the church.” 

“That is incredible,” I said abruptly, “to wish to 
close the doors of Christ’s Church on the penitent Mag¬ 
dalen—that would be not the act of Christian but of 
devil! ’ ’ 

“ It was what they did,” said my friend. “ Fortunately 
my pastor is a good Christian and he refused to yield one 
single jot to the pressure brought to bear upon him. But 
the opposition was great. The respectability of the 
church must not be endangered by the admission of lost 
women, even when they have been found and are 
anxiously and prayerfully seeking to enter in to the 
fold.” 

Here was a revelation indeed! Such a church may be 
respectable as Tliurtell the murderer was declared to be 
respectable—because he kept a gig; but its respectability 
will not save it from going down, with all its convention¬ 
alities, into perdition, nor will it have far to go. For 
the abode of such is nigh unto the gates of Hell. 

Swinburne’s bitter lines came back to me as I listened 
to this good woman’s story of some Chicago Christians 
and heard its confirmation from others in other churches. 


Maggie Darling. 35 

Surely your race it was that He 
Beholding in Gethsemane, 

Bled the red bitter sweat of shame, 

Knowing the name of Christian should 
Mean to men evil and not good. 

And assuredly in the long roll of the anti-Christian acts 
of the conventional church there is no blacker record 
than that which deals with the lost women of our streets. 
Nothing can exceed in revolting injustice the conven¬ 
tional mode of treating the weaker and the most tempted 
as a moral leper, while her guiltier partner occupies the 
highest places in the synagogue. 

Justice is at least as holy a thing as charity and the 
injustice of the world’s judgment which the church has 
countersigned is as loathsome as the selfish immorality 
of the man which it condones as a kind of offset to the 
Draconian severity with which it avenges the faults of 
the weaker sinner. 

The lost women, these poor sisters of Christ Jesus, the 
images in which we have fashioned a womanhood first 
made in the image of God, are as numerous in Chicago 
as in any other great city. The silent vice of capitals 
abounds here at least to the same extent that it prevails 
in other cities of the million class. Where there are a mil¬ 
lion inhabitants it is probably an under estimate if it is 
assumed that there must be at least a thousand women 
who make their living, not intermittently but constantly 
by means of prostitution. These regulars of the army 
of vice constitute the solid core or nucleus of a host far 
more numerous of irregulars, who, either from love of 
license or from need of money, give way to a temptation 
which is always at hand. The inmates of the sporting 
houses, so called, are probably not one-tenth of the total 
number of women who regard their sex as legitimate 
merchandise. 

Both sporting houses and “roomers” maybe found 
in all parts of the city, but there is no section in which 
they are so concentrated as in the district between Har¬ 
rison and Polk and between Clark and Dearborn streets. It 


36 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

was there in the center of the heart of Chicago that I 
found Maggie Darling in the house of Madame Hastings. 

Madame Hastings is a familiar figure in the alsatia of 
more than one city. She is famous in Chicago courts as 
having been the defendant in the case which led to the 
practical ruling that the police could not arrest anyone 
they pleased on a warrant made out against those mythical 
personages, Richard Roe or John Doe. Before she con¬ 
tested that case, strange though it may appear to those 
who are unfamiliar with the Turkish methods of Chi¬ 
cago “justice,” a policeman armed with a warrant charg¬ 
ing Richard Roe with an offense against the law could, 
on the strength of that document, arrest anybody at his 
own sovereign will and pleasure. Mary Hastings, being 
raided on such a warrant, appealed to the higher court, 
which as was to be expected, promptly decided against 
the validity of the Richard Roe warrant, and Mary’s 
name became famous in a leading case. 

Apart from this excursion into the law-making region, 
Madame inspired some awe, if not respect, by the ven¬ 
geance she wreaked upon certain police officers, who, hav¬ 
ing a grudge against her, smashed her furniture during 
her enforced absence from her property. She reported them 
to Mayor Harrison in person, and their offense being 
proved, three policemen and one sergeant were dismissed 
the force; from which it may be seen that the name and 
fame of Mary Hastings are as familiar to the administra¬ 
tion as to the lawyers. Her establishment is not a 
very large one beside the double house of Vina Fields, 
which almost immediately adjoins it, and the extensive 
premises of Carrie Watson on Clark Street. Madame 
Hastings’ house is rather crowded when it contains twelve 
girls. Madame, who is Belgian, bred and born, owns 
another house at 2004 Dearborn Street, and in course of 
a somewhat adventurous career has seen much of the 
seamy side of life, both married and single, in Canada 
and the United States. She has plied her calling 
in Toronto, in British Columbia, in Denver, Port- 


Maggie Darling. 37 

land, Oregon, in San Francisco, and has a wide and 
varied experience with the police wherever she has wan¬ 
dered. In San Francisco she was in prison for six 
months for conduct too scandalous even for Califor¬ 
nians. On the whole she has the greatest terror of 
the police of the Dominion. “ When the English say 
you’re to git, you’ve just got to git and that’s all there is 
to it,” she said mournfully, “ you can’t do anything with 
them ; with our police it is different.” 

Of which there is no doubt. For as big Pat the Tar- 
rier, the policeman, went his rounds in Fourth Avenue, he 
seldom failed to look in upon Madame at supper time, or 
indeed, at any time when he felt thirsty. Pat was one of 
the four custodians of law and order whom it was neces¬ 
sary for Madame to square. The relations between the 
sporting houses and the police on their beats is intimate, 
not to say friendly. The house is at the absolute mercy 
of the officer, who can ruin its business by simply keep¬ 
ing it under constant observation, or he can, if he pleases, 
have it “pulled” every day in the week if his moral 
sense or his desire for vengeance should so prompt. The 
keeper of the house, if she is to live and thrive, must make 
friends with the policeman, and there is usually not the 
least difficulty in doing so. Tariffs vary in Fourth 
Avenue as in Washington, but Madame had succeeded 
in securing virtual protection at a blackmail scale of 
$2.50 per officer per week with free drinks, and occas¬ 
ional meals whenever the “cop” felt hunger or thirst. 
As there were four of them on duty, two by day and 
two at night, and they were often thirsty, it may be 
taken that this police “protection” cost the house 
$15.00 a week or $750 a year.—an irregular license fee 
paid to private constables for liberty to carry on. 
This of course does not include the further fees levied by 
superior officers, the fines, the money paid to bailsmen, 
and other incidental expenses, which fall heavy upon the 
houses of ill-fame. 

“ Ye ould —— 


-s,” said the Tarrier, one evening, as 



38 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

he marched in at the back door, “ and wat kind o’ soup 
hev ye's today? An’ shure, and pass me the whusky, 
and for shame to ye, Maggie,” he added, seeing one of 
the girls emptying a wine glass, “ for shame to ye, to 
think that ye are Oirish and a drinkin’ wine! It’s 
whusky ye should drink. ’ ’ 

He was not an ill-natured man, was Pat, and as he sat 
down and drank the whisky and tasted the soup in the 
midst of the scantily attired women, his good nature 
beamed on his fat face and he became confidential : 

“Now, I’s tellin’ ye,” he said. “Be shure and look 
out, for I am going on another beat for the next month, 
and the cops that’s coming are mean divils, and if ye 
don’t take care it’s pulled ye’ll be, so look out for your¬ 
selves. ’ ’ 

Sure enough, the next day there was a new patrolman 
on the beat, and the girls were more cautious in their 
hustling. The routine of the day at Madame Hastings 
was monotonous enough. In the morning, just before 12, 
the colored girl served cocktails to each of the women 
before they got up. After they dressed, they took another 
refresher, usually absinthe. At breakfast they had wine. 
Then the day’s work begun. The girls sat in couples 
at the windows, each keeping watch in the opposite direc¬ 
tion. If a man passed they would rap at the window 
and beckon him to come in. If a policeman appeared, 
even if it were their fat friend, the curtains would be 
drawn and all trace of hustling would disappear. But be¬ 
fore the officer was out of sight the girls would be there 
again. They went on duty fifteen minutes at a time. 
Every quarter of an hour they were relieved, until dinner 
time. At five they dined, and then the evening’s busi¬ 
ness began, with more drinking at intervals, all night 
through, to the accompaniment of piano playing with 
occasional step-dancing, and adjournments more or less 
frequent, as customers were more or less plentiful. About 
four or five in the morning, when they were all more or 
less loaded with drink, they would close the doors and go 


Maggie Darling. 39 

to sleep. Next day it would begin again, the same dull 
round of drink and hustling, debauch and drink. A 
dismal, dreary, monotonous existence broken only by 
quarreling and the constant excitement supplied by the 
police. 

For a day or two the girls were discreet, but finding 
no harm came they relapsed a little, and “ Redhead,” the 
new policeman, saw them hustling at the window. So 
a warrant was sworn out at the police station and at 
five o’clock at night a posse of nine policemen sallied 
forth to “ pull ” Mary Hastings. The pulling of a house 
of this description is one of the favorite entertainments 
of the district. It attracts the floating and resident pop¬ 
ulation as much as a first-class funeral draws the crowd 
in a country town. All unsuspecting the fate in store 
for them, the girls were preparing to sit down to dinner. 
Maggie was mixing the absinthe when the bell rang. 
Bohemian Mary—for here as elsewhere in Chicago, there 
are people of all nationalities under heaven—opened the 
door. A policeman placed .his foot so the door could not 
be closed in his face and demanded Madame. When she 
came he produced his warrant and eight other officers 
filed into the house. Every door was guarded. There 
was no escape. Had there been but a few minutes 
warning the girls could have fled down the trap doors 
prepared for such an event, which led to the cellar from 
whence they could escape to a friendly saloon which 
frequently received them into its hospitable shelter. 
But it was too sudden. “ Oh-! ” said Maggie, run¬ 

ning up stairs, “ we’re pulled ! ” “ Yes,” said the officer, 
“and you’d better dress yourselves and make ready to 
go off to the station. 

As Maggie was hastily putting on her dress one of the 
officers who had followed her to her bed-room touched 
her on the shoulder. “ Would you mind making a 
date with me ? ” he said. The girl’s appearance pleased 
him. “And though he was on pleasure bent,” like 
John Gilpin, “ he had a frugal mind.” Policemen get 



40 


If Christ Came to Chicago. 

their women cheap, and when you are arresting a woman 
she cannot haggle about terms. So Maggie said, “For 
sure.” “Well,” he said, “I am on Clark, can I meet 
you there some day next week?” “Certainly,” she 
replied, “ send me a message making the date and it will 
be all right.” 

By this time they were getting ready to start. Madame 
had thrust a roll of 300 dollar bills into her stocking. 
The girls, not less mindful of contingencies, had stuffed 
into their stockings small bottles of whisky and cigar¬ 
ettes and made ready to accompany their captors. There 
were six altogether. The housekeeper, the cook and 
one of the girls, a newcomer who was passed off as a ser¬ 
vant, remained behind. Madame and her family of five 
stepped out amid the curious crowd which watched for 
the patrol wagon. “It makes a girl feel cheap,” said 
Maggie, “let’s start for the station.” No sooner said 
than done. Bohemian Mary set off at a run followed by 
her cursing, panting custodian; then came the other girls, 
while Madame brought up the rear. It was no new 
thing to her. The house had been pulled only two 
months before and it was all in the day’s work. 

When they arrived at the police station they were 
taken down stairs and locked up all together in one of 
the iron barred cells. The police found a bottle of 
wine in a French girl’s stocking and drank its contents 
to the immense indignation of its owner, who gave him in 
her own vocabulary “ blue blazes.” He only looked and 
laughed. “Here’s to your health, Frenchie ! ” said the po- 
licman as he drank the last drop. Madame in the mean¬ 
time had dispatched a trusty messenger for a bondsman 
and as soon as he arrived she was bailed out. The girls 
in the cell amused themselves with shouting and singing 
and cursing and drinking, while Maggie and another 
tested their agility by climbing like monkeys up the 
iron bars of their grated door. 

It was more like a. picnic than an imprisonment. 
They had drink and cigarettes and company. They 


Maggie Darling. 41 

were as noisy and more lively and profane than if they 
had been at home. 

In about an hour Madame bailed them all out, putting 
up $10 a head for their punctual appearance at the po¬ 
lice court on Monday morning. Then the half dozen, 
more drunk than when they were pulled sallied out in 
triumph and resumed business as usual in the old prem¬ 
ises as if nothing had happened. 

Five or six hours afterwards, about midnight, I made 
Maggie Darling’s acquaintance. I had been around 
several of the houses asking their keepers and their 
inmates to attend my meeting at the Central Music Hall 
the following day. A strange pilgrimage that was from 
house to house, to discuss what Christ, would think 
of it, with landladies whose painted damsels in undress, 
were lounging all around! At last, well on to mid¬ 
night, I came to Madame Hastings. The excitement 
of the “pulling” was still visible; Madame was indig¬ 
nant. She knew who it was that had put the “ cops ” 
on to her and she cursed them accordingly. Mag¬ 
gie was flushed and somewhat forward ; both her eyes 
were blacked, the result of a fight with a French inmate 
of the house. 

“I don’t want anything,” I said to Maggie. “Why 
can you not talk decently once in a while? Sit down 
and let us have a good talk.” 

Maggie looked at me half incredulously and then sat 
down. 

“ I want you to come to my meeting tomorrow night,” 
I said, “at Central Music Hall.” 

“ Yes,” she said, “ what kind of a meeting is it?” 

“Oh, quite a new kind of meeting,” I answered. “I 
am to speak on what Christ would think of all this, 
and I want you know it all, to come to the meeting. ’ ’ 

Maggie became serious ; a dreamy look came over her 
face. 

Then she said, “ Oh, Christ! He’s all right. Its the 


42 


If Christ Came to Chicago. 

other ones, that’s the devil.” Then she stopped. “ Its 
no use,” she added, shortly. 

“What’s no use?” I asked, and after a time she told 
me the story which I repeated in brief at Central Music 
Hall next dav. 

It was a grim story ; commonplace enough, and yet 
as tragic as life, that was told to me at midnight in 
that tawdry parlor. The old Jezebel flitted in and out 
superintending her business ; the jingling piano was 
going in the next room where the girls were dancing, 
and the air was full of the reek of beer and tobacco. 
Maggie spoke soberly, in an undertone so that Madame 
might not hear what she was saying. Her narrative, 
which she told without any pretense or without any 
appeal for sympathy or for help, seemed a microcosm 
of the history of the human race. The whole of the 
story was there ; from the Fall to the Redemption ; from 
the Redemption to the Apostacy of the church, and the 
blighting of the hopes of mankind. I give it here as a 
page, soiled and grimy it may be, but nevertheless a verit¬ 
able page torn from the book of life. Maggie Darling is a 
human document in which is recorded the ruin of one of 
the least of those of the brethren of Christ. It illustrates 
many things in our social organization, from the ruthless 
sacrifice of childhood, due to the lack of factory laws, 
to the murderous brutality of conventional Christianity, 
aping the morality without the heart of its Lord. 

“No,” said Maggie coldly. “Its no use! Don’t 
commence no religion on me. I’ve had enough already. 
Are you a Catholic ? ” 

“ Why ?” I asked. “ No, I am not a Catholic.” 

“ I’m glad,” she said, “ you’re not a Catholic. I have 
no use for Catholics. Least of all for Irish Catholics. I 
will never go near any of them any more, and if I could 
do them any harm, I would travel a thousand miles to 
do it. ’ ’ 

Maggie was excited and troubled. Something in the 
past seemed to harass her, and her language was more 


Maggie Darling. 43 

vigorous than can be quoted here. After a little she 
became more restrained, and by degrees I had her whole 
history. 

She was born of Irish-American parents, in Boston, 
in 1870. Her father was a carpenter by trade. Her 
mother died when Maggie was a mere child. Shortly 
after her death the family crossed the continent to Cali¬ 
fornia, where her father married again. He was a 
drunkard, a gambler and a violent tempered man, much 
given to drinking, and inclined to treat his children 
with great brutality. Maggie, after spending a year 
or two in a convent school in San Francisco, left 
before she had learned either to read or to write, and 
began to make her own living, at nine years of age. 
She was employed in a shoe factory, where she made 
from $4.50 to $7 a week at piece work. There were 
several children of only seven years of age in the factory. 
These infants were employed in picking shavings. They 
started work at six o’clock in the morning, had half an 
hour for dinner, and were dismissed at five. At the 
factory Maggie learned to read out of the newspapers, 
by the aid of her companions, and when she was eleven 
was sufficiently smart to obtain a situation as companion 
and reader to an old lady, who was an invalid, at $15 a 
month and her board. The place was comfortable. She 
remained there until she was eighteen. 

From that situation she went as chambermaid to a 
private family in Golden Gate Avenue. She was eigh¬ 
teen, full of vigor and gaiety. She was a brunette 
with long dark hair, a lively disposition, and with all 
the charming audacity and confidence of inexperience. 
She fell in love. The man was older than she and 
for a time she was as happy as most young people in 
their first dream. Of course she was going to be married. 
If only the marriage day would come! But there are 
twenty-four hours in every day, and seven days in every 
week. Her betrothed, not less impatient, hinted that 
after all they were already united, why could they not 


44 


If Christ Came to Chicago . 

anticipate the ceremony. Did she not trust him ? He 
swore that it was all right, that everybody did it and they 
would be so much more to each other. 

But why repeat the oft told story ? At first Maggie 
would not listen to the suggestion. But after a time 
when he pressed her and upbraided her and declared that 
she could not love him if she did not trust him, she 
went the way of many thousands, only to wake as they 
have done with the soft illusion dissipated by the ter¬ 
rible reality of motherhood drawing near, with no 
husband to be a father to her child. When she told him 
of her condition, he said that it was all right; they must 
get married directly. If she would leave her place and 
meet him next day, at the corner of a certain street, he 
would take her to a church and they would be married. 
In all trusting innocence, relying upon his word, she 
gave up her situation, put up such things as she could 
carry and went next day to the trysting place. Of course 
the man was not there. After waiting till heartsick she 
went to make inquiries; she soon discovered the fatal 
truth. Her lover was a married man, and he had skipped 
the town followed by the brother of another of his 
victims. 

Imagine her position! She had exactly fifteen cents 
in her pocket. If she had gone home her father, fierce 
and irascible as he usually was, would have thought 
little of killing the daughter who had brought disgrace 
upon the family. She dared not return to her old situ¬ 
ation which she had left so suddenly. She had no char¬ 
acter from her mistress and no references. Besides in 
six months she would be confined. What was she to do ? 

Her position is one in which some thousands of young 
women find themselves all over the world at this very 
moment. She was in the position of Eve after she had 
eaten the forbidden fruit and had been cast out of the Gar¬ 
den of Eden. It is a modern version of the Fall, and as 
the Fall led down to destruction, so it was with Maggie 
Darling. She seemed to be shut up to sin. She wan- 


Maggie Darling . 45 

dered about the town seeking work. Finding none all 
that day she walked about in the evening. She kept 
walking aimlessly on and on, until night came and she 
was afraid. When it was quite dark and she found a 
quiet corner she crouched upon a doorstep and tried to 
sleep. What was she to do? She was lonely and miser¬ 
able; every month her trouble would grow worse. Where 
could she hide? She dozed off, only to awaken with a 
start. No one was near; she tried to sleep again. Then 
she got up and walked a little and rested again. When 
morning came she was tired out and wretched. Then 
she remembered the address of a girl she knew who was 
living in the neighborhood. She hunted her lip and was 
made welcome. But her friend had no money. For one 
night she sheltered her, but all her efforts to find work 
were in vain. 

What was to be done? On the third day she and her 
friend met a man who asked them if they wanted a job. 
They answered eagerly, yes. He gave them the address 
of a lady who he thought could give them something to do. 
They went there and found it was a house of ill-fame. 
The woman took them in and told them they might 
stay. Maggie hesitated. But what was she to do? She had 
lost her character and her place, and she had no friends. 
Hfcre she could at least get food and shelter, and remain 
till her baby was born. It seemed as if she were driven 
to it. She said to herself that she could not help it, and 
so it came to pass that Maggie came upon the town. 

Two years she remained there, making the best of it. 
Her baby fortunately died soon after it was born, and 
she continued to tread the cinder path of sin alone. 
This went on for three years, and then there dawned 
upon her darkened life a real manifestation of redeeming 
love. One day when she had a fit of the blues, a young 
man came into the house. He was very young, not 
more than twenty. Something in her appearance 
attracted him, and when they were alone he spoke to her 
so kindly that she marveled. She told him how 


46 If Christ Came to Chicago . 

wretched she was, and he, treating her as if she were his 
own sister, encouraged her to hope for release. u Take 
this,” he said, as he left her, giving her five dollars. 
“ Save up all you can until you can pay off your debts 
and then we will get you out of this.” 

He came again, and yet again, always treating her in 
the same brotherly fashion, giving her five dollars every 
time, and never asking anything in return. After she 
had saved up sufficient store to pay off that debt to the 
landlady, which hangs like a millstone round the neck 
of the unfortunate, her young friend told her that he 
had talked to his mother and his sister, and that as soon 
as she was ready they would be delighted to take her 
into their home until such time as they could find her a 
situation. Full of delight at the unexpected deliverance, 
Maggie made haste to leave. The young man's mother 
was as good as her word. In that home she found a 
warm welcome, and a safe retreat. Maggie made great 
efforts to break off the habit of swearing, and although 
she every now and then would make a bad break, she 
made such progress that at length it was deemed safe 
and prudent to let her take a place as a general servant. 
The short stay in that Christian home had been to her as 
a glimpse into an opening paradise. Hope sprang up 
once more in the girl’s breast. She would be an honest 
woman once again. Thus, as we have seen her repro¬ 
duce the Fall, so we see the blessed work of the Redeemer. 
Now we have to see the way in which His people, “ the 
other ones,” as she called them, shuddering, fulfilled 
their trust. 

Maggie went to a situation in Oakland, Alameda Co., 
Cal. Her new mistress was a Mrs. McD—, an Irish 
Catholic of very devout disposition. She was general 
servant at $10 a month. She worked hard, and gave 
every satisfaction. Even the habit of profanity seemed 
to have been conquered. Gradually the memory of her 
past life with its hideous concomitants was becoming 
faint and dim, when suddenly the past was brought back 


Maggie Darling. 47 

to her with a shock. She was serving at table when she 
suddenly recognized in one of the guests a man who had 
been a customer in the old house. She felt as if she 
were going to drop dead when she recognized him, but 
she said nothing. The “ gentleman,” however, was not 
so reticent. “Where did you get that girl from?” he 
asked Mr. McD—. “Get her,” said Mr. McD—; 
“why, she’s a servant in our house.” “Servant,” 

sneered her guest; “I know her. She is a-from 

San Francisco.” 

How eternally true are Dowell’s lines: 

Grim-hearted world, that look’st with Levite eyes 
On those poor fallen by too much faith in man, 

She that upon thy freezing threshold lies, 

Starved to more sinning by thy savage ban, 

Seeking that refuge because foulest vice, 

More God-like than thy virtue is, whose span 
Shuts out the wretched only, is more free 
To enter Heaven than thou wilt ever be ! 

Thou wilt not let her wash thy dainty feet 

With such salt things as tears, or with rude hair 
Dry them, soft Pharisee, that sitt'st at meat 

With him who made her such , and speak'st him fair, 
Leaving God’s wandering lamb the while to bleat 
Unheeded, shivering in the pitiless air : 

Thou hast made prisoned virtue show more wan 
And haggard than a vice to look upon. 

But in this case it was even worse. The lamb which 
had sought shelter was driven back into the wilderness. 

Mr. McD— would not believe it, but said that he 
would tell his wife. Mrs. McD— at once sent for Mag¬ 
gie. “ If only I’d been cute,” said she to me when 
telling the story, “ I would have denied it, and they 
would have believed me. But I thought I had broken 
with all that, and that I had to tell the truth. So I 
owned up and said yes, it was true, I had been so, but 
that I had reformed, and had left all that kind of life. 
But the old woman, d— her! she would listen to noth¬ 
ing. ‘ Faith, she would not have the disgrace of having 
a-in her house! ’ that was all she said.” 

“ Have you anything against me ? ” said Maggie. 




48 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

“ Have I not done your work for you ever since I came ?’’ 

u No,” was the reply, U I have nothing against you, 
but I cannot have a person of your character in my 
house. You must go.” 

Maggie implored her to give her a chance. “You are 
a Catholic,” she said, “ will you not give me a helping 
hand ? ” 

“No,” was the inexorable reply. “That does not 
matter. I cannot have a-in my house.” 

Feeling as if she were sinking in deep water, Maggie 
fell on her knees sobbing bitterly and begged her for the 
love of God to have mercy on her and at least to give 
her a recommendation so that she might get another place. 

It was no use. “ I cannot do that, for if anything 
went wrong I would be to blame for it.” 

“Well then,” said Maggie, “at least give me a line 
saying that for the four months I had been here I have 
worked to your satisfaction.” 

“No,” she said. 

“The old hound!” exclaimed Maggie to me. “My 
God, if ever I get the chance I’ll knife the old she devil. 
Yes, if I swing for it. What does it matter ? She’s blasted 
my life. When I saw it was all no use, I lost all heart and 
all hope and I gave up there and then. There’s no hope 
for such as me. No, I had my chance and she spoiled 
it, God d—n her for a blasted old hypocrite. And now 
it is no use. No use, never any more. I have taken 

dope, I drink. I’m lost. I’m only a - I shall 

never be anything else. I’m far worse than ever I 
was and am going to the devil as fast as I can. It’s no 

use. But-me to blue blazes if ever I come 

within a thousand miles of that old fiend if I don’t 
knife her if I swing for it. When I think what I might 
have been but for her ! Oh, Christ! ” she cried, “ What 
have they done with my life?” 

What indeed ? After the Fall the Redemption, after the 
Redemption the Apostacy, and now as the result, one of 

The images ye have made of Me ! 






CHAPTER III. 

WHISKY AND POLITICS. 


It was in Brant Smith’s saloon where I first met 
Farmer Jones. Brant Smith is the Democratic captain 
of the Ninety-first Precinct of the Hundredth Ward. 
Like many other Democratic captains in Chicago and in 
New York, he combined the political duties of leader of 
the precinct with the commercial calling of saloon-keeper. 
In his district there is no more respectable saloon than 
that of Brant Smith. It is a marvel. To the left and 
to the right of it there are saloons which are frequented 
by the toughest characters in Bum Street. A little fur¬ 
ther down are saloons which are merely annexes to so 
many houses of ill-fame, overrun with loose women who 
hang about in all stages of dishabille, endeavoring as 
best they can to attract the attention of customers who 
drop in for a drink or for a cigar, to their faded charms. 
There is nothing of all this in Brant Smith’s. You 
may go in, as I have gone, at any hour of the day or 
night and you will not see any of that class of women; 
indeed it is a rare thing to see a woman at all either at 
the counter or at the billard table which occupies the 
most conspicuous position in the rear of the saloon. 

During my stay in Chicago Brant Smith’s became 
one of my favorite resorts, partly because of its situa¬ 
tion—it was an oasis of cleanliness and light in the midst 
of a district which was decidedly tough—partly because 
of Brant Smith himself, who is one of the most intelli¬ 
gent and interesting politicians I have met in Chicago, 
and partly, and perhaps most of all, because Brant 
Smith’s was the hang-out of Farmer Jones. Farmer 
Jones is a remarkable man. I made his acquaintance 
during my first visit to Chicago and renewed it when I 


49 


50 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

returned. It was, however, not until the night on which 
Mayor Hopkins was elected that I fully appreciated the 
significance and the value of my new acquaintance. I 
think, on the whole, Farmer Jones had done more to 
reassure my faith in the future of Chicago, and to give 
me the clue to its secret than any other man in the city. 
Yet when I walked along the street with Farmer Jones 
on one occasion and passed a doctor who had for many 
years practiced on Bum Street he deemed it his duty to 
send a special messenger to warn me to take care, 
as the man I was with was one of the toughest of 
the toughs in the slums. Farmer Jones’ appearance at 
that time, it must be admitted, was rather against him. 
There was an ugly wound on his right cheek which was 
partly concealed by sticking plaster, his chin was cov¬ 
ered with the stubbly growth which indicates that the 
barber is three days behind his time, his eyes were 
bloodshot and restless, while for his hair,—well. It is 
said in Chicago that Mayor Hopkins was elected by the 
silkstockings on the one hand and the short hairs on the 
other; Farmer Jones was emphatically not a silkstock¬ 
ing dude and he was as conspicuously one of the short 
hairs. He stood about five feet ten or eleven, some¬ 
what spare in his build, with a slight slouch and a curi¬ 
ous amble in his gait caused by a lameness in one of 
his feet. You usually saw him with a billy-cock hat 
on his head and a cigarette in his mouth, and his 
clothes, to put it mildly, were somewhat the worse for 
wear. 

When I did my day on the streets with the broom 
and shovel brigade Farmer Jones was kind enough to 
accompany me. It was from him that I had borrowed 
my working clothes. They had been lying for twelve 
months in a locker in Brant Smith’s saloon. They 
were pretty dilapidated, but when I was fully equipped 
and I sallied forth together with Farmer Jones and took 
our places in the street cleaning brigade we were as 
pretty a pair as there was to be found in Chicago. Yet 


5i 


Whisky and Politics. 

this tough denizen of the slums, with his stubbly beard 
and bloodshot eyes, was, by universal consent of all 
who knew him, one of the smartest men in politics. 
It was only whisky that was the matter with him, that 
was all. But then, it must be admitted, there is a good 
deal in whisky, especially when it is applied internally 
at pretty frequent intervals from morning till night. 

The first time I met Farmer Jones I was so busy talk¬ 
ing to Brant Smith that I did not hear much of what he 
had to say. But on the second occasion I well remem¬ 
ber what he said. It was the first night of the registra¬ 
tion for the mayoralty election, and, as was to be expected 
under the circumstances, Farmer Jones had celebrated 
the occasion by such frequent libations that it was some¬ 
what difficult for him to maintain his equilibrium. By 
holding on to the counter, however, he was able to 
explain with some considerable triumph the number of 
Democrats whom he had registered that day. There 
was a gain on the total number and there was great joy 
in the saloon over the result of the first day’s innings. 
When Farmer Jones saw me, he steadied himself for a 
moment by the counter and said: 

“I want to talk to you, Mr. Stead. I want a long 
talk with you. But not now.” 

“Why not now?” I asked. 

“I have a great deal to say to you,” he continued, 
“but I cannot say it to-night.” 

“But why not?” again I asked. 

“ Because,” he said, as he looked at me very solemnly 
as he swayed to and fro, with a curious owlish look in 
his eyes, “because, Mr. Stead, my head is rather 
inuzzy — and my tongue — is so thick —and to tell 
you the truth, Mr. Stead,” he said, as he gave a lurch 
towards me, “to tell you the truth — lam half drunk.” 

There could be no doubt as to his condition, although 
there might have been some dispute as to the fraction. 
But he had still enough sense to know what he was 
driving at. After a time I got him persuaded to en- 


52 


If Christ Came to Chicago. 

deavor to use his thickened tongue in order to explain 
what he wanted to say to me. He had evidently been 
impressed by the way in which I had spoken about 
the saloons at the Central Music Hall. The saloon 
people in Chicago have been so accustomed to receive 
nothing but vitriolic denunciation from every person 
who speaks in public on temperance or morality that 
they could hardly believe their ears when they found 
that for once they had been treated with ordinary 
justice. 

He said, at last, “If you want to do any good 
in this town begin a crusade against the inde¬ 
cent saloons. You will do no good at all if you go 
against all the saloons, but you should distinguish 
between the decent and the indecent saloons.” 

“ But what do you mean by an indecent saloon ? ” 

“ A saloon like this is a saloon and nothing else ; but 
a saloon to which I could take you a few doors from this 
is not so much a saloon as it is the door to a house of ill- 
fame. There is a field where every honest man will 
support you. Why do you not stick to that and let us 
have in Chicago saloons that are saloons and not saloons 
that are sporting houses and gambling hells as well ! ’ ’ 
I agreed with my friend that this was a practical policy ; 
but he was hardly in a condition to go into details, so we 
adjourned the conference until a more convenient time. 

That time did not come until the day of the mayoralty 
election. When my son and I walked over to the saloon 
after dinner we found Brant and his friends in a state of 
great jubilation. It was just after eight o’clock and 
sufficient number of returns had come in to show that 
Hopkins’ election was all but assured. There was a 
crowd of men in the saloon. Brant, as usual, was be¬ 
hind the counter, as sober as a judge, while far back, in a 
state of complacency which often accompanies the early 
stages of befuddlement, sat Farmer Jones. 

‘ ‘ Hopkins is in all right, ’ ’ said he to us, “ there are only 
two more precincts to come in and his majority is over 


53 


Whisky and Politics. 

a thousand. But come,” he said, “sit down and I will 
tell you all about it. ’ ’ 

He led the way into the back of the saloon and set¬ 
ting himself against the wall placed chairs on either side 
of a small wooden table and proceeded to unfold the true 
inwardness of electioneering methods in the Ninety- 
first Precinct of the One Hundredth Ward in the year of 
our Lord 1893. It was extremely interesting, instructive 
and full of suggestion. 

The scene of the narrative was in appropriate keeping 
with the nature of the story which was unfolded. The 
saloon was well filled with a number of men who seemed 
to consider that the importance of the occasion and the 
significance of the victory demanded continual relays of 
drinks. As for Farmer Jones himself, he found it nec¬ 
essary at intervals throughout the evening to lay in stores 
of hot Scotch whisky ; this, he explained to me apologeti¬ 
cally, was owing to the fact that his extremities got 
so very cold, he needed just a little something to keep 
up the circulation. Beer was the general drink, but 
although every now and again a free and independent 
citizen who had been vindicating the rights of the peo¬ 
ple by voting for Mr. Hopkins would require a little 
slumber after his exertion, there was 110 quarrelling, and 
there was a great deal of good nature. Outside in the 
street in front of the saloon a great bonfire was blazing. 
Some luckless garbage boxes from the back yard and all 
the avaiiable timber that was lying loose was pressed into 
service in order to celebrate the Democratic triumph. 
Farmer Jones took no part in building the bonfire, con¬ 
tenting himself with giving words of command to the 
gang of men who tramped backwards and forwards 
through the saloon, carrying fuel to the flames. Most of 
the men wore the white silk badges of the Democratic 
party, while some of them carried a card with the por¬ 
trait of Hopkins in their hat. The bard of the occasion 
was one Brennan, an Irishman, who became so effusively 
hilarious as the hours stole on towards midnight, that, 


54 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

after having sung an indefinite number of songs, many of 
his own composition, and executing step dances to the 
music of an accordion, he insisted upon decorating me 
with a Hopkins card. Farmer Jones protested. He said I 
was a stranger and a visitor and not a naturalized citizen 
and that I ought not to be compelled to wear the Hop¬ 
kins card, but the bard insisted, and by midnight my son 
and myself might have been mistaken for two of the 
staunchest of the Democratic citizens who had exercised 
their right of citizenship by returning Hopkins at the 
head of the poll. 

“You see,” said Farmer Jones, as he settled himself 
to his hot Scotch and looked at me through his cigarette 
smoke, raising his voice slightly so as to be heard 
over the drone of the music and the laughter that fol¬ 
lowed each verse of Bard Brennan’s song, “ you see we 
have done our part in this precinct. It is a black Re¬ 
publican precinct and we polled a majority of ninety for 
Hopkins. I took most of them to the poll myself,” he 
said with some degree of justifiable pride. “Yes, I 
polled ninety votes in this precinct for Hopkins, and it 
did not cost me more than half a dollar a head, whereas 
the Republicans had to pay their men $3 each before 
they could get them to the poll.” 

This inside glimpse into the finances of voting some¬ 
what startled me. “ But,” I said, “ do you mean to say 
that the Republicans paid $3 a head for their votes? 
That was rather high, was it not? The Democrats in 
the 170th Ward were only paying their men $2 a head.” 

“ They paid $3 in this precinct,” said he. “ There was 
any amount of money going on Swift’s side. Why, I 
was offered $100 myself if I would only stay at home on 
election day and do nothing.” 

“ But who offered you that? ” 

“The Republicans, of course. They have been 
spending money all round. They sent me word that if 
I would go down to the Central Committee I should 
have $100 merely to stay at home. They tried that on 


Whisky and Politics. 55 

all round. Why there was Skippen—you know Skippen, 
that infernal scoundrel! Why, he went round trying to 
bulldoze the lodging house keepers in this neighborhood. 
When he found that he could not frighten them by 
telling them he would put crape on their doors if they 
did not help to elect Swift, he offered them any amount 
of money merely to keep citizens from voting. They 
would not do it, not they. He had to get out of that 
pretty quick I tell you. Oh, Skippen, he is a son of a 
gun, he is ! ” 

“ What is the matter with Skippen ? ” 

“Why, Skippen is a U. O. D.” 

“What in the name of mischief is a U. O. D.?” I 
inquired anxiously. 

“Well,” he said, “a U. O. D. is short for a mem¬ 
ber of the United Order of Deputies ; that is the most 
powerful secret society which exists in America at the 
present time, and its object is to prevent anyone having 
anything in politics or anywhere else that was not born 
on American soil. But I reckon,” said Jones, compla¬ 
cently, “that Skippen will not show his head in this 
precinct again.” 

“Why?” I asked. 

“ Do you know what we did as soon as the polls opened 
this morning ? ’ ’ 

“ No.” 

“We simply fired Skippen out of the polling 
booths.” 

“ Fired him out! How did you do that ? ” 

“ We told him he had to git and he got.” 

“ But how could you do that? ” 

“Don’t ask any questions,” he said. “They know 
what it is that is meant. Skippen would have been 
killed, that is all I can say.” 

“ But who told him so ? ” 

“ There was no need to tell him. There is no need 10 
say such things. They did not take long to clear out 
and leave us alone.” 


56 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

“ Well,” I said, ‘*supposing lie had refused?” 

“ Well, we should have had to use arguments with him. 
We should have convinced him, never fear. We might 
have been sorry to use them but he wisely did not force 
us to use them. It reminds me,” said Farmer Jones, 
“ of a story that used to be told about Mr. Hamlin. He 
used to travel with a circus up and. down the country. 
It was a habit of his always to ride ahead of his show 
to make the business arrangements. One day he was 
riding along in Virginia and he came to a plantation. 
He rode into the front yard where he saw an old 
gentleman sitting upon a stoop. 1 Stranger,’ said he 
‘are you from the North?’ ‘Iam,’ said Mr. Ham¬ 
lin, whereupon, before he knew what was going to 
happen, the old gentleman picked up a rock and flung 
it at him so that it struck his head and fetched the 
blood. Thinking he had had enough of the conver¬ 
sation Mr. Hamlin rode away until he came to a trough 
be the wayside, where he dismounted and began to wash 
away the blood which was streaming down his face. 
While he was so engaged a negro came riding up in hot 
haste and said ‘ Are you de gentleman dat de colonel 
threw a rock at?’ ‘Wall,’ said Mr. Hamlin, wonder¬ 
ing what was the matter, ‘I guess I am.’ ‘Oh,’ said 
the nigger, ‘ I have come from the colonel, and a bery 
fine gentleman he is — a bery fine gentleman indeed — 
a perfect gentleman ; he wishes to apologize — he says he 
is bery sorry he hit you with a rock, sah, he is bery sorry, 
bery sorry indeed, sah, and he sent me to ride after you, 
sah, to give you his best respects and his compliments, 
and say to you, sah, that he never would have hit you 
with a rock if he had had any other weapon handy ! ’ 
So,” said Farmer Jones, when he had finished his story, 
“Skippen understood and took the hint in good time.” 

“Well,” said I, “when you got the polling stations 
in your hands, what did you do?” 

“Voted our men, of course.” 

“And the negroes, how did they vote ? ” 


Whisky and Politics. 57 

‘ 1 They voted as they ought to have voted. They 
had to.” 

“ But,” said I, “ the ballot is secret enough, how could 
you compel those people to vote against their will ? ” 

u They understood, and besides ” said he, u there was 
not a man voted in that booth that I did not know how 
he voted before he put his paper into the judges’ hands. ” 

“And your own men, you say it cost you half a dollar 
a head?” 

“Well,” said he, “ I had not to pay more than half a 
dollar for any of them. My total expenses today for 
everything is only $45 and I voted many for a drink and 
some voted for quarters, but no one got more than half 
a dollar. You know,” he said with a smile, “we have 
some curious experiences on polling day, and sometimes 
they get a laugh on a fellow. For instance, I went into 
a stable this afternoon and I found nine citizens who had 
not voted and it occurred to me that they were very 
thirsty. So I borrowed a pail and went into a saloon 
and got it filled with beer, which cost me 35 cents. I 
took it to the stable expecting that when they had 
quenched their thirst they would be capable of the exer¬ 
tion of going to the polls and voting for Hopkins. But 
it did make a fellow feel cheap when they took that 
pail of beer and gave it to one of the horses.” 

“ Then you did not vote them after all ? ” * 

“Oh yes I did, but it cost me half a dollar a head.” 

“ How did the foreigners vote? ” 

“ I voted fifty-four Italians all in a block and I had not 
a cent to pay for them. You see,” said he, “the 
Italians are great believers in Democratic principles.” 

I said I thought it would be rather difficult for them to 
know the difference between Republican and Democratic 
principles. 

“No, you will find that they are all devoted admirers 
of Democratic principles and Republican institutions,” he 
said with emphasis. “These Italians voted all right 
because I made them citizens. They would not have had 


58 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

a vote but for me. Not one of them could speak a word 
of English, either, what is more. ’ ’ Then waxing wroth 
as something came to his mind, he said, “We have got 
some judges in Chicago who need to be removed. Think 
of that Judge Gibbons ! I took those Italians down to 
naturalize them as citizens—fifty-four as fine men as ever 
you set eyes on, all residents in this ward and all good 
Democrats. When I brought them in Judge Gibbons 
asked me if they could speak English. I said, ‘ No, your 
honor. ’ He asked me if I could answer for them being 
good citizens. I said I knew they were great believers 
in American institutions, and then that judge absolutely 
refused to naturalize them.” 

“ What did you do ? ” 

“ I thought it was time to take a change of venue. So 
I went to another judge. This judge he said to me, 

1 Now Jones, what do you want to do with these men? ’ 

‘ I want to make citizens of them. ’ ‘ Can they speak 

English?’ ‘No, not one of them.’ ‘Can you speak 
Italian?’ ‘ Not a word.’ ‘Then how can you answer 
for them ? ’ ‘I can answer only for one. ’ ‘ Which one 

is that ? ’ ‘ This one,’ I said, ‘ he can speak a little French 
and I can speak French, and I can answer for his allegi¬ 
ance to American institutions. I will answer for him, 
and I want you to enroll him as a citizen.’ The judge 
did so. Then that man answered for another and so on 
until the whole fifty-four were American citizens. I 
voted them to the last man for John Patrick Hopkins.” 

“But,” I said, “Jones, I do not understand how you 
get hold of those fellows. ’ ’ 

“I work ’em,” he said. Then, replenishing his hot 
Scotch he raised his hand to about four feet above the 
floor, and added, meditatively. “ She is just about that 
high, a little bit of a thing just about eight years old.” 

“ What do you mean ? ” 

“ It was a little Italian girl helped me or I could never 
have done anything.” 

“ Do explain what you mean,” I said. 


Whisky and Politics. 59 

u Well,” said he, as he lit’another cigarette, “ two years 
ago I noticed that a friend of mine who lives down the 
block had a bright little girl who was beginning to go 
to the public school. He was an Italian and a very fine 
man although he could not speak much English. I kept 
my eye on that little girl and whenever I went to see her 
father I .always took her a pound of candies or a toy tor¬ 
toise or a snake or anything of that kind, even if to do 
so I had to borrow a quarter. So I quite got hold of the 
little girl ; she thinks I am her best friend in the world 
and she will go anywhere with me and do anything I 
want. When the elections come round I just go to her 
with a bag of candies and we go canvassing together. 
She can speak both Italian and English ; so she goes with 
me and translates anything I have got to say. I have got 
great hold over the Italians here and it is all through 
that little girl.” 

Up to this point I had been more or less scandalized, 
but now I began to get interested — interested as a man is 
interested when, after a long search in a great ravelment of 
odds and ends and thrums and tatters, he comes upon a 
skein which may possibly give him a clue to the con¬ 
fusion. This story of the way in which Farmer Jones 
had roped in the Italian girl as his go-between and 
interpreter, so as to enable him to get hold of the non- 
English-speaking Italians and made them his friends and 
voted them for the Democratic candidate—here was some¬ 
thing which made me inclined to cry “ Eureka ! ” Here at 
last was something like a clue to the agency which has 
worked this great conglomerate of rival nationalities into 
one homogeneous whole ; here in a low and rudimentary 
state, no doubt, but with vigorous vitality in it, there was 
the principle of human brotherhood and the recognition 
of human service. There was religio—a real religion— 
or the linking together of man to man. Which of all 
the churches, I wondered, would take so much trouble for 
so long a time merely in order to get hold of a little Ital¬ 
ian girl to work into their organization this rough unas- 


6o 


If Christ Came to Chicago. 

similated hunk of Italian ism which Farmer Jones had 
got hold of in order to strengthen the Democratic party ? 

Farmer Jones, however, did not see anything in it, but 
was more intent upon pursuing the thread of his own 
meditations. 

“ Stop a minute,’* said he, “ I want to show you some¬ 
thing.” With that he disappeared. Making his way more 
or less unsteadily across the saloon, he presently returned, 
bringing with him a black hat through the rim of which 
a jagged hole was punched near the right temple. 

“ You see that,” said he. “ Do you know what made 
that ? ” 

“No,” I replied. 

“ A knife, and it nearly cost me my life. But it would 
not have happened if I had taken a hint from my little 
Italian girl. I got it from an Italian, the ungrateful 
hound.” 

“ Tell me about it. ” 

“You see,” said Jones, “ It was that scoundrel Billerot, 
the ungrateful dog ! But never mind, I will be even with 
him yet. It was only this year that we were having the 
elections for constables. Billerot was put up for elec¬ 
tion. I did not like the fellow and voted against him 
at the first ballot. We had to vote again. He came to 
me and said, ‘ Oh, Jones, me wants two votes to be elected. 
Me a good fellow, Jones, do give me your votes.’ 1 No,’ 
said I, ‘ I don’t like you, I won’t vote for you.’ ‘ Oh, me 
very good fellow,’ said he, and he went on so that I had 
compassion for him and, against my own judgment, I 
voted for him and got him five votes. He was elected, 
the son of a gun,” said Jones, betaking himself to his hot 
Scotch with an assiduity which made me fear that his 
tongue would again become so thick as to preclude the 
possibility of my receiving the end of his interesting- 
discourse. 

“Well,” said I, “what about Billerot?” 

“ He is an ungrateful wretch. The other day we had 
a meeting of Italians in the ward for Mr. Hopkins. So 


Whisky and Politics. 61 

I went for my little girl to go with me to the lodging 
houses to get my men. Who should I find at the first 
lodging house but Billerot. I said to him, ‘Well, Bil- 
lerot, are you going to come to our meeting ? ’ ‘ What 
meeting ? ’ asked he, and before I could answer the little 
girl twitched the side of my trousers and I saw that I was 
in the wrong box. ‘ Why, Mr. Hopkins’ meeting,’ I said. 
‘ Me no go, me no for Hopkins.’ ‘ What! ’ I said, ‘ you 
no for Hopkins and I got you to be constable ? ’ ‘Oh, you 
good fellow, Jones, but me no like your alderman. Me 
no like Hopkins.’ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘all right. I will go 
and see the Italians.’ ‘No,’ said he, ‘you no go in, me 
no let you go in. No vote for Hopkins, me don’t like 
your alderman.’ ” 

“ Then,” said Jones to me, “ you know I am rather hot 
tempered and I sometimes say things I ought not to 
say, but I cannot help it, and I just bent forward to him 
and said, ‘ Billerot, you remember there are some people 
in this town who are in a secret society, that killed Dr. 
Cronin, and they are called the Clan-na-gael ; and there 
are other people in this town of all manner of national¬ 
ities except Italians, and they blew up the policemen at 
the Haymarket; and,’ I continued, looking him full in 
the face, ‘ there is another set of men in this town and 
they call them the Mafia.’ I had hardly got out the 
words when as quick as lightning he flashed out his knife 
and struck at me with all his force.. I dodged the 
knife and instead of splitting my head open as he in¬ 
tended it went through the brim of my hat and cut open 
my cheek. The little girl was standing close by us, 
otherwise he and I were alone. The blood streamed 
down my face, but the moment he struck at me I grabbed 
my gun and began blazing at him. But he quit fast as 
soon as he saw he had missed me, and the blood was so 
much in my eyes that I could not see plainly to hit him. I 
went across to see some of his countrymen and they said 
‘ Did you call him a Mafiote ? ’ ‘ Indeed I did,’ said I. 


62 


If Christ Came to Chicago. 

1 Well,’ said he, ‘ I am not suprised that he tried to knife 
you, for it is God’s truth. ’ ” 

Jones stopped. Then he added, complacently, “ I 
think that man’s political career is ended.” 

'* What will they do with him,” I asked. 

“ I don’t know, but no good, I reckon. No doubt he 
will lose his constableship next election, and there is no 
future for that man in Chicago.” 

Jones remained quiet for a time. He had told the 
story with a vivid realism that made it stand out like a 
picture by one of the Dutch masters of the interior of a 
tavern or a camp—a vivid little thumbnail sketch, as it 
were, of the realities of politics and electioneering in the 
first ward: the Mafiote with his knife stabbing madly 
at the American with his gun, whose one regret was that 
the blood in his eyes rendered it impossible for him to 
shoot his fellow citizen, and consoling himself with the 
thought that by his political pull he would be able to 
blight the Mafiote’s rise in the political hierarchy of the 
American Republic. Here at least were realities and not 
theories. 

After another song from Brennan, “What a genius,” 
he said, meditatively, ‘ ‘ what a wasted genius; that man 
will sing from morning till night. As long as he has 
his beer he never seems to tire. But here,” said he, 
“ is another citizen who would not have voted but for 
me.” So saying, he introduced a tall, somewhat melan¬ 
choly man who was doing odd jobs about the saloon. 
“ Here is my friend Dafton, who has been unfortunate. 
He has just come out of the penitentiary in Indiana, 
where he had been sent for two years.” We made room 
for the gentleman at the table and soon he was quite 
sociable and friendly. 

His story was rather a sad one. He was a teamster in 
good work in Chicago, whose wife had proved unfaith¬ 
ful to him, and feeling discouraged he had gone to work 
on a railway in Indiana. When there he had taken care 
of the swag of a fellow workman who was lying dead 


Whisky and Politics. 63 

drunk at a strange saloon. He got drunk himself be¬ 
fore he could explain matters and was arrested for steal¬ 
ing his comrade’s money. He was sent to jail for two 
years. On coming out he came to Chicago but would 
not have been allowed to vote but for his friend Jones. 
He wrote to the chaplain of the jail in Indiana, who re¬ 
plied in high terms of the behavior of Dafton while in 
custody. Armed with this credential Jones had been 
down to the election commissioner and received from 
him a certificate which entitled his friend to vote at the 
election. Dafton was an interesting man, who had seen 
hardship and who, in his melancholy, saturnine way, was 
somehat of a mournful philosopher and a good Democrat 
all the same, so he was welcomed to the fraternal bond 
which united us all that night in celebrating the return 
of Mr. Hopkins. 

After hearing of his intervention to get Dafton his 
right to vote, I said laughingly to Farmer Jones that he 
seemed to be kept quite busy in the ward. 

He put down his cigarette, looked at me and said 
bashfully, u Well, I reckon that I get more people into 
the County Hospital and more people out of the police 
station than any alderman in the city. Yes, I am kept 
quite busy. I think I get one man a week into the 
County Hospital, and—let me see—about two and a half 
every week out of the police station. That is not all, 
either,” he added, “I have to bury a good many of 
them also.” 

“ Bury them, what is that for?” 

“Well,” he said, “ I know a good many Irishmen, fine 
fellows, and when they die I have not the heart to let 
them be buried by the county. I have got eight free¬ 
hold lots in Oakwood Cemetery in my own possession, 
and the ninth is nearly ready.” 

“ What on earth have you to do with burying them?” 

“Well, I have got something inside of me here,” he 
said, laying his hand upon his breast, “ which causes me 
a great deal of trouble. I cannot see a fellow creature 


64 If Christ Came to Chicago . 

suffering without trying to help him if I can. When 
these poor fellows have died I go round to the hotels, 
and to my friends, and beg the money, and I have never 
failed yet in raising all that is necessary.’’ 

“ How much is necessary?” I asked. 

“ I will tell you,” said he. He went over item by item 
pretty much as follows, “ There is $10 for a lot in Oak- 
wood Cemetery, $3 for moving the corpse from the 
morgue, $16 for the coffin, $5 for the shell, and I always 
take down four or five pall-bearers and bring them back 
again. I also pay $2 for an itinerant preacher to say 
service over the grave. Altogether it comes between $45 
and $50. They are buried properly and never a doctor’s 
knife in any of them.” 

“ But about the County Hospital?” 

“ There is sometimes trouble about getting a man in. 
So if any of my friends need to be attended to I go with 
them. They know me at the hospital and they must 
take him in if I go with him.” 

“ How is that?” 

“ Well, if they object to take him in I sit there until 
they do or until they send him to Dunning. It saves 
the man trouble and gets over a good many obstacles 
which are made to a man being received.” 

“ I can understand that, but how do you get the peo¬ 
ple out of the police station?” 

“Oh,” he said, “ that is not difficult. You see I have 
got a pull and anyone who has got a pull can do a great 
deal.” 

“ Supposing I were your friend and had been arrested, 
what would you do?” 

“Supposing one of my friends were locked up to¬ 
night for being drunk, I would go to the police station 
and see the cop who had run him in and I would tell 
him that I could answer for that man, that he was a 
good man and that he was all right.” 

“ But supposing he was not all right?” 

“ Qh, but then he is all right,” said Jones. “ You can 


Whisky and Politics. 65 

not say that it would be good for a man to be locked up 
with thieves and criminals because he took a glass too 
much.” 

“But supposing he was a thief? ” 

“ That would be a different matter; I would do noth¬ 
ing for a crook. Neither would I do anything for a man 
who kept on making a beast of himself. 'He had better 
go to the Bridewell. But when a good fellow gets over¬ 
taken once in a way I get him out. ” 

“ But supposing that the police will no f let him out?” 

“ Well, then there would be nothing fox it but to bail 
him out and see if I could not get him off the next 
morning. The justices know me. If I could not get 
him off, then I would get his fine suspended.” 

“ What do yoii mean by suspended ? ” 

“Why, suspended ! It means that the fine is taken off, 
and you do not pay it.” 

“ But,” I said, “ when a fine is imposed, is it not 
collected? ” 

“Not when it is suspended, and you can usually get 
your fine suspended when you have a pull. I had a little 
experience of my own that way.” 

I begged him to tell the story, and, nothing loath, he 
began. 

“It was once when I was very discouraged. I had been 
employed by a corporation, and another corporation was 
jealous of me, and they had me fired out. I was so dis¬ 
couraged that I got drunk for two days. It was a very 
big spree, and at the end of two days I felt very bad. I 
thought I had had enough of it, and I wanted to be sent 
to the Washingtonian Home to be cured. So I went down 
to the police station, and asked them to lock me up 
and send me to the Washingtonian Home. But the cop 
who was there was my friend, and he said,' ‘Jones, I 
could not lock you up; I could not do such an un¬ 
friendly action to you. ”’ 

“ ‘ But I want to be locked up.’ But he said, ‘ I could 
not do it, Jones ; you have not done anything.’ ‘Yes, I 


66 


If Christ Came to Chicago. 

have,’ I said. ‘ I am drunk, and I want to be sent to the 
Washingtonian Home in the morning.’ ‘ No,’ said he, 
4 1 would not do it for a friend. ’ ” 

“‘Well,’ said I, ‘you will have to lock me up if I 
commit a crime. ’ ’ ’ 

“ ‘ But you would not commit a crime, Jones? ’ ” 

“ ‘ I will if I am driven to it. I want to get to that 
home. I will one way if I can’t get there another.’ ” 

“ ‘ Oh, nonsense,’ he said, and he laughed.” 

‘ ‘ I went out and I felt that it was too bad that I could 
not get locked up without committing a crime, but as I 
had to commit a crime I thought I might as well take it 
out of the corporation which had lost me my situation. 
I went down the street and stood opposite the window. 
It cost $100 and I kicked my foot through it and then 
took a stone and in a few minutes there was not much 
left of that window. There were two men inside the 
office, but they were afraid to give me in charge, so I 
marched up and down the street to a cop and gave myself 
up. I said ‘ I want you to arrest me for malicious injury 
to propert.’ He took me to the police station. When I 
got there I said, ‘ Now you must take me in charge, as I 
have committed a crime.’ The cop said he did not 
know what to enter on the charge sheet. I told him to 
put me down ‘ malicious injury.’ So he took me down 
to the cell and locked me up ; I was very tired and I 
felt as if my head were three feet long, but I got to 
sleep.” 

“The next day I did not feel so discouraged and I did 
not want to go to the Washingtonian Home any more. 
When they brought me into court, who was there but 
my old friend Justice Jennings. The plate glass insur¬ 
ance people were there and the corporation also. I 
looked at the justice, and you know,” said he with a 
half bashful smile, “ there is somehow or other an odd 
smile on my face which comes when I cannot help it. 
I no sooner stood up before the justice than my old 
smile came back upon my face. The justice said, ‘ What 


Whisky and Politics. 67 

are you doing here ? ’ I said, ‘ I have been on a drunken 
spree and I have done some mischief but I would like to 
pay for it.’ The window cost $100 and I had not a red 
cent to pay it with. I said I would go out and collect 
the money if he would release me for a time. The plate 
glass insurance people, however, objected ; they said that 
it was a scandalous case and that the utmost rigor of the 
law must be insisted upon. So the justice went into the 
case. When he had heard it he fined me $7 and $1 costs. 
I said, ‘Will you give me time to raise the money, your 
honor ? ’ ‘ Wait a minute,’ said the justice. So I 

waited until the insurance man and the corporation 
people had gone. Then the justice said that the fine 
was suspended if I paid the dollar costs. A detective, a 
friend of mine, lent me the dollar and I paid the costs. 
Then I borrowed a dollar and paid the detctive back and 
we all had a drink together. I have not been to the 
Washingtonian Home yet, and now I think I had better 
have another hot Scotch before going home,” he added. 

To most people, possibly to every one who reads this 
chapter, such an inside glimpse of the practical working 
of the Democratic machine in Chicago would fill them 
with a feeling of despair. This, they will say, is the 
outcome of Democracy, the latest triumph which Repub¬ 
lican institutions have achieved in the New World ! What 
a picture ! Bribery, intimidation, bull-dozing of every 
kind, knifing, shooting, and the whole swimming in 
whisky ! Yet it is from that conversation I gained a 
clearer view and a surer hope for the redemption of 
Chicago than anything I had gained from any other 
conversation I have had since I came to the city. Here 
at least I was on the bed-rock of actual fact, face to face 
with the stern realities of things as they are. Yet here, 
even in this nethermost depth, was the principle of human 
service, there was the recognition of human obligation, 
set in motion, no doubt, for party reasons, and from a 
desire to control votes rather than to save souls. But 
whatever might be the motive, the result was unmistaka- 


6 S If Christ Came to Chicago. 

ble. Rough and rude though it might be, the Democratic 
party organization, and, of course, the Republican party 
organization to a less extent in the same way, are never¬ 
theless doing the work which the churches ought to do. 
They are stimulating a certain number of citizens to 
render service and discharge obligations to their fellow 
citizens and so are setting in motion* an agency for mold¬ 
ing into one the heterogenous elements of various races, 
nationalities and religions which are gathered together 
in Chicago. In its own imperfect manner this rough, 
vulgar, faulty substitute for religion is at least compel¬ 
ling the heeler and the bartender and the tough, whom 
none of the churches can reach, to recognize that funda¬ 
mental principle of human brotherhood which Christ 
came to teach. 


CHAPTER IV. 

THE CHICAGOAN TRINITY. 

Chicago, though one of the youngest of cities, has 
still a history, which begins, like that of more ancient 
communities, in blood. That royal purple has seldom 
been lacking at the beginning of things. Whether it is 
Cain and Abel, Romulus and Remus, or the massacre 
of the garrison of Fort Dearborn, the baptism of blood 
fails not. In the New World, as in the Old, the same rule 
holds true, and every visitor to the capital of the Western 
World is naturally taken to the historic site of the event 
with which the history of Chicago may be said to have 
begun. 

On the rim of the shore of Lake Michigan, on a spot 
then a desolate waste of sand hills, but now crowded with 
palaces, stands, leafless and twigless, the trunk of an old 
cottonwood tree, which marks the site of the massacre of 
the garrison. Fourscore years and more have passed 
since the thirsty sand drank the life-blood of the victims 
of that Indian war, but still the gaunt witness of the 
fight looks down upon the altered scene. In 1812, when 
the British were at war with the French in Europe, our 
Canadian representatives were busy fighting and diplo¬ 
matizing against the French and their allies on the great 
lakes. The Americans had struck in on their own ac¬ 
count on the side of the French, and the British had 
just whipped them out of Detroit and Michigan, which 
had a narrow escape of becoming a Canadian province. 
War is war, and British and Americans fought on, each 
using as best it could the Indian tribes which swarmed 
in the unsettled country. The British made allies of 
Tecumseh, the great chief of the Pc ^awatomies, and 


69 


70 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

Fort Dearborn, the American outpost at Chicago, be¬ 
came the immediate objective of the allies after the 
Americans had been driven out of Detroit and Michigan. 
The officer in charge, Captain Heald, a weak incompe¬ 
tent, decided to evacuate by arrangement with the 
Indians. Whether this decision was right or wrong, he 
carried it out in the worst possible way. He first sum¬ 
moned the Indians to a council and promised them all 
the goods in the fort, including the ammunition and fire¬ 
water, and then broke his word by throwing all the 
powder and shot down a well, and emptying the liquor 
into the river. The Indians, furious at this breach of 
faith, waited until the little party had reached the open, 
a good mile distant from the fort, when they attacked 
and massacred all but twenty-five soldiers and eleven 
women and children. The scene of the massacre is 
marked by the venerable trunk of the cottonwood tree, 
while close by the genius of a Dane has commemorated, 
at the cost of a millionaire, the evacuation and the mas¬ 
sacre, in a spirited group surmounting a pedestal with 
bas-reliefs. 

The sculptor by a happy inspiration has selected as 
his motif the one incident of that bloody fray that 
possesses other than a gory interest. While the Potta- 
watomies were scalping and tomahawking the pale faces, 
regardless either of sex or age, Mrs. Helm, the daughter 
of Mr. Kinzie, the patriarchal settler of early Chicago, 
was rescued from imminent death by Black Partridge, an 
Indian chief, who had long known and loved her father. 
The group on the summit of the pedestal represents 
Mrs. Helm desperately struggling to seize her assailant’s 
scalping-knife, while the splendid chief, Black Partridge, 
intervenes to snatch her from her impending doom. 
The surgeon who was slain is receiving his death blow 
at her feet, while a frightened child weeps, scared by the 
gleam of the tomahawk and the firing of the muskets. 
The bas-reliefs, which are not in very much relief, tell 
the story of the evacuation, the march, and the massacre, 


The Chicagoan Trinity. 71 

and enable the least imaginative observer, as he looks out 
over the gray expanse of the lake, to picture something 
of the din and alarm of that bloody August day, and 
to recall, too, something of the elements of heroism and 
of humanity, which redeemed the grim tale of India 
war. 

With the mind full of the Pottawatomies and their 
tomahawks, pondering upon the possibilities of latent 
goodness surviving in the midst of the scalp knife savagery 
of the redskin tribes, you tear yourself away from the 
traditions of Black Partridge, the Kinzies and the rest, 
and find yourself confronted by the palaces of million¬ 
aires. Mr. George M. Pullman’s stately mansion stands 
in the shade of the cottonwood tree, his conservatory is 
erected upon the battle field, and he lives and dines and 
sleeps where the luckless garrison made its last rally. 
Prairie Avenue, which follows the line of march, is a 
camping ground of millionaires. Within an area of five 
blocks, forty of the sixty members of the Commercial 
Club have established their homes. Mr. Marshall Field 
and Mr. Philip Armour live near together on the east 
side of the avenue a little further south. Probably 
there are as many millions of dollars to the square inch 
of this residential district as are to be found in any equal 
area on the world’s surface. It is the very Mecca of 
Mammon, the Olympus of the great gods of Chicago. 

What strange instinct led these triumphant and mili¬ 
tant chiefs of the Choctaw civilization of our time to 
cluster so thickly around the bloody battle field of their 
Pottawatomie forbears? “ Methinks the place is 
haunted,” and a subtle spell woven of dead men’s bones 
attracts to the scene of the massacre the present repre¬ 
sentatives of a system doomed to vanish like that of the 
redskins before the advancing civilization of the new 
social era. Four score and two years have hardly passed 
since the braves of Tecumseh slew the children in the 
Dearborn baggage wagon, but the last of the Pottawat- 


72 


If Christ Came to Chicago. 

omies have long since vanished from the land over 
which they roamed the undisputed lords. 

Long Before four score years have rolled by the mil¬ 
lionaire may be as scarce as the Pottawatomie, and man¬ 
kind may look back upon the history of trusts and 
combines and competitions with the same feelings of 
amazement and compassion that we now look back upon 
the social system that produced Tecumseh and Black 
Partridge. How the change will come we may not be 
able to see any more than the Pottawatomies were able to 
foresee the value of the real estate on which Chicago was 
built. They parted with it in fee simple for three cents 
an acre, and did not even get that. But the Pottawat¬ 
omie passed and the millionaire will pass and men will 
marvel that such things could be. 

Chicago, though nominally Christian, does not con¬ 
cern itself particularly about the Trinity, whose nature 
and attributes are so carefully and precisely defined by St. 
Athanasius. So far as Chicago men are concerned St. Ath¬ 
anasius might have spared himself the trouble. They 
have a trinity of their own of whom they think a great 
deal more than they do of Father, Son and Holy Ghost. 
In abstruse theological dogmas, modern Chicago takes 
little stock. But it subscribes with both hands to any 
thing that is undersigned by the three Dii Majores of 
Prairie Avenue, Marshall Field, Philip D. Armour and 
George M. Pullman. These three millionaires are the real 
workaday deities of modern Chicago. They have the 
dollars and more of them than anyone else. Therefore, 
they of all men are most worship-worthy. They are the 
idols of the market place. Not that there is much of rev¬ 
erence in the popular homage. Chicago, like the Hindoo, 
is quite capable of scourging its idols once a year and 
throwing them into Lake Michigan. But worship in the 
real sense does not necessarily imply genuflections, ko¬ 
towing and chin-chinning oriental fashion. You wor¬ 
ship what you consciously or unconsciously set before 
yourself as the ideal toward which you aim, the model 


73 


The Chicagoan Trinity. 

according to which you endeavor to fashion your life. 
That is real worship. Incense burning and prayer drill 
and hymn singing and sermon hearing may or may not 
have a close and living connection with your religion. 
But that which a man really worships he honestly imi¬ 
tates as the manifest expression of the best conception 
he has of the will of God. 

Interpreted in that sense there is no doubt that the 
members of real working trinity of Chicago are Field, 
Armour and Pullman. The young man of Chicago has 
one aspiration. He would like to be as successful as 
they. Each of them in his own way is a beau ideal of 
triumphant money-making. The honors which the 
French paid to their Louis the XIV or the first Napo¬ 
leon, which Italy paid to Michael Angelo and Raphael, or 
which England paid to Shakespeare or to Gladstone, Chi¬ 
cago pays to the supreme money-getters of their day. 
“ Marshall Field,” says one citizen, “has made $40,000,- 
000 in twenty years;” and all other citizens, metaphor¬ 
ically speaking, act as did the subjects of the Chaldean 
monarch when the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sack- 
but and psaltery and all kinds of music summoned them 
to fall down and worship the golden image that Nebu¬ 
chadnezzar, the king, had set up. Chicagoans, being 
practical, dispense with the musical instruments. The 
chink of the silver dollar is enough. 

“ As their gods were so their laws were,” and as our 
gods are so our lives are. Millionaires are some of the 
images into which society has modeled human clay out 
of the semblance of Christ. They are specialists whose 
whole existence is devoted to one purpose, and that the ac¬ 
quisition and the accumulation of gold. Carlyle, you re¬ 
member, draws a weird and ghastly picture of a man who, 
living solely for the gratification of his gluttonous appe¬ 
tite, becomes in the end merely an appendage to an enor¬ 
mous stomach. Millionaires have all of them a constant 
tendency to drivel and shrivel up into mere patent safes 
for the custody of their gold. Fortunately for Chicago, her 


74 If Christ Came to Chicago . 

millionaires have made their money, they have not in¬ 
herited it. The real significance of the millionaire who 
works to build up his fortune will not be seen or appre¬ 
ciated until we have the millionaire who inherits it. 

Marshall Field, the first of the greater gods in the 
Pantheon of the West, is a born trader. He comes of the 
true Yankee breed, and he has made his fortune by being 
quick to perceive that the day of the great store had 
arrived. What the Louvre and Bon Marche are in 
Paris, what Wliiteleys and Shoolbreds are in London, 
Marshall Field & Co. are in Chicago. Their wholesale 
store is one of the sights of the city, and the guide books 
tell with admiration that “ Richardson, the eastern ar¬ 
chitect, received $100,000 for the plans of this stupendous 
pile.” The floor space devoted to the wholesale trade 
covers twelve acres; the building is 130 feet high, there 
are thirteen elevators and in this huge hive of industry 
1800 employes are constantly employed dispatching the 
largest wholesale dry goods business in America. In 
their retail establishment on Wabash there is what is 
probably the perfection of business capacity directed to 
the facility of distribution. As the latest finishing touch 
to the conveniences of this gigantic bazaar, sixty pneu¬ 
matic tubes, ramifying into all parts of the building, 
convey cash and return change with almost lightning-like 
rapidity. A brigade of some 3,000 men and women are 
employed behind the counters, and the universal testi¬ 
mony is that the management is far in advance of that 
of most dry goods stores in Chicago or elsewhere. Merit 
is readily recognized ; promotion comes so rapidly, that 
the present head of the retail establishment, is still 
quite a young man. There is none of the scandal, such as 
rumor has persistently associated with other dry goods 
houses in Chicago and elsewhere. They do not use up 
extreme youth by employing juvenile cash girls, neither 
do they pay their female assistants rates of wages which 
suggest, if they do not enforce, the necessity for supple* 
menting their earnings elsewhere. 


75 


The Chicagoan Trinity. 

Marshall Field & Co. is familiar as a household word 
throughout the city, and it is readily recognized that 
wherever money is required in public benefactions an ap¬ 
peal is seldom made to Mr. Field in vain. He and his 
partners were leading members of the syndicate of mil¬ 
lionaires which ran the World’s Fair, and although 
much has been said, and little printed, concerning the 
jobbery which prevailed in that select circle, there is no 
doubt but that they acted with a lavish munificence 
which contributed immensely to the success of the Exhi¬ 
bition. It was Mr. Marshall Field also whose bequest of a 
million dollars led to the establishment of the Art 
Palace as a permanent memorial of the great exhibi¬ 
tion. Mr. Field therefore is undoubtedly a high class 
specimen of the public-spirited millionaire, and to this 
extent Chicago is fortunate in having him at the apex of 
her social system. 

Regarded from the standpoint of business Marshall 
Field’s career undoubtedly offers much that is attractive 
and tempting. If, in these days of competition, the man 
who can go one better than all his other competitors and 
clear the field of all other rivals is to be considered as 
having reached the ideal of a business man, then Mar¬ 
shall Field unquestionably stands near the top of the 
tree, if not at the ver> top. His partners say with pride 
that there is not a dollar of the forty millions he has 
made which is not clean money gained in legitimate 
commerce. That is more than can be said of a great 
many of the money kings of the present day. But after 
all this is admitted, the estimate in which the Marshall 
Fields and all that class are held very closely resembles 
that with which we regard the Hannibals, the Tamerlanes 
and the Napoleons of history. They loom up before the 
eyes of their fellow men because they have succeeded in 
ascending a pyramid largely composed of human bones. 
They represent the victor in the warfare of their time. 
They have gone out to battle, taking their chances as 
other men, and they have come out uppermost; but for * 


76 If Christ Came to Chicago . 

those who have gone under even history can shed her 
tributary tear. 

Old residents in Chicago have told me how when each 
fresh department was added to Marshall Field’s stores it 
was as if a cyclone had gone forth among the smaller 
houses which were in the same line of business. When 
Marshall Field opened any new department, say of cutlery 
or hardware or millinery, jewelry, etc., or what not, he 
would run it at cut rates so as to give him the command of 
the field, contenting himself with the profits of the other 
departments. Against such a power, so concentrated in 
turn against each detachment of the enemy, or the com¬ 
petitor, nothing could stand. The consumer is loath to 
pay a nickel more to an old tradesman for what he can 
get for a nickel less down town. So it has come to pass 
that Chicago is honeycombed from end to end with 
elderly men who twenty years ago had businesses of their 
own in retail stores by which they expected to make a 
living of their own and to have a comfortable compet¬ 
ence on which to retire in their old age. They reckoned 
without their Marshall Field, however, and others of his 
class who have passed through the streets of Chicago 
with much the same effect upon the smaller stores as that 
which the angel of the Ford had upon the besieging 
host which surrounded Jerusalem under Sennacherib. 

He breathed but a breath on the camp as he passed 

And the little store put up its shutters and the place 
which knew it once knew it no more. All this, of course, 
was legitimate business, just as the campaigns of Caesar 
and Gustavus Adolphus were legitimate warfare. Mr. 
Marshall Field has no explosive bullets in his locker. 
What he has done to others, others were allowed to do to 
him, if they could. All the same, although it may be nec¬ 
essary and inevitable, no one who knows the devas¬ 
tation which is wrought by each successive tri¬ 
umph of centralization in distribution, no one who sees 
the changes which are wrought when a dozen centers of 
supply are merged into one great concern vhen the 


77 


The Chicagoan Trinity. 

store keepers become only retail clerks depending for their 
existence upon the caprice of their manager, can refrain 
from sighing that the gain should be purchased at such 
cost. The merging of all the distributing centers in 
a few great stores can only be regarded with the 
mixed feelings with which German patriots look back 
upon the unification of Germany. It was necessary, 
and the advantage outweighs the loss, but' the pro¬ 
cess was cruel while it lasted and the ultimate gain is 
not yet in sight. 

Marshall Field is a silent and reserved man, who very 
seldom commits himself to a public utterance. Even 
the ubiquitous interviewer seldom obtains from Mr. 
Field more than a succinct sentence. The ornamental as 
well as the oratorical part of his marvelous business he 
leaves to his partners. He does not give the impression 
to those who know him well that his immense wealth 
has been a source of joy and gladness which most men 
think can be purchased for cash down. Marshall 
Field, like other men, has found that the most triumph¬ 
ant success before the world may be accompanied with 
bitter disappointments, to avoid which he would have 
done well to have bartered many of his millions, but alas, 
in matters of life and death and health and home what 
the gods give is given, what they withhold is withheld, 
nor can they be tempted to change their gifts by all 
the wealth of Croesus. 

Mr. Field probably rejoices to believe that in the 
conduct of his own business he has never stooped to 
anything which would conflict with his own idea of 
right and wrong. But it is not surprising that his con¬ 
ception of duty as a business man, and the conceptions 
of those who are not weighed down by his responsibili¬ 
ties, or hardened by the life of struggle in which a busi¬ 
ness man spends his days, do not altogether coincide. 
Mr. Field can hardly be said to be living up to the highest 
conceivable standard of social excellence. The great mill¬ 
ionaire is currently reported, for I cannot find any public 


78 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

utterance of his to that effect, to look with scant sympa¬ 
thy upon the tentative efforts of the social reformer to 
shorten the hours of labor, and put an end to the curse 
of sweating. Neither does he acquiesce joyfully in the 
restrictions which the interstate railway law places 
upon the tyrannous strength of great trusts and corpora¬ 
tions. Sweating, of course, he would consider to be an 
unavoidable evil. If it is possible to suppress it in 
Illinois he can still get sweated goods supplied from other 
states where the wage-earning class has not so much 
of a pull over the legislature. This may be so, but Mr. 
Field might consider whether it had not better be met 
by urging the other states to level their legislation up to 
the Illinois standard than to use the example of the back¬ 
ward legislatures in order to break down the bulwark 
which Illinois has erected for the protection of the 
sweated worker. 

The second person of the Chicago trinity, Mr. Philip 
Armour, is probably the best of the three. Those who 
know him well declare that in many respects he is an 
ideal man of business, full of brawny common sense. He is 
a Scotchman, and he might have been nurtured from in¬ 
fancy on the Book of Proverbs, which is said to be re¬ 
sponsible for much of the business instinct which 
enables the Scotch to freeze out the Jews, an achieve¬ 
ment which entitles them to a first rank among the 
nations. Mr. Armour is the head of the most gigantic 
butchering establishment in the world. He is a kind of 
mythic genius presiding over the transformation of 
beeves and swine into extract of beef and canned meats. 

He is generous and open-hearted and many stories are 
told of his liberality in relieving individual distress. 
Some of these stories may be legendary and many no 
doubt are apocryphal, but they all point in one direction 
and indicate that the lord of the packing trade is a man 
liberal of hand and soul who thoroughly enjoys bestow¬ 
ing largess upon those who are in need of his bounty. 
As a man of business he is methodical, industrious and 


The Chicagoan Trinity. 79 

Untiring. No clerk is more punctual at his desk than 
the head of the great packing establishment which last 
year did nearly one hundred million dollars of business. 
No galley slave is more closely chained to his oar than 
Mr. Armour is to his desk. He is the first man to 
arrive at the office, between six and seven every morning, 
nor does he leave it till late in the afternoon, when every¬ 
thing has been attended to and all the innumerable ques¬ 
tions arising in the dispatch of his world-wide business are 
left shipshape. Mr. Armour is one of the few men who 
live up to Benjamin Franklin’s wise saws and eschew the 
use of midnight oil. “ Early to bed ajd early to rise 
makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise,” is an old saw 
which may be said to have fulfilled itself so far as wealth 
is concerned in the case of Philip Armour. He is said 
to be in bed every night by nine o’clock and has had 
his beauty sleep before midnight. He is up with the 
lark and by the time most of his competitors are having 
their breakfast he is already half through his day’s work. 
He began this long ago when he was a young man and 
it has become to him a habit from which he cannot 
break away even if he would. 

A Chicago journalist one time said to Mr. Armour, 
“ Why do you not retire? You have made far more 
money than you know what to do with. Even if you 
slept round the clock money would still come in, more 
money than what you could use. Why cannot you get 
out of it all and leave the field to younger men ? Why 
not give them a chance? You overshadow everything, 
monopolize everything in the place, and we have only 
one great butcher in the place of a thousand little ones. 
You have made your pile, why not clear out ?” 

Mr. Armour listened patiently, as he always does, and 
answered, “ Because I have no other interest in life but 
my business. I do not want any more money; as you 
say, I have more than I want. I do not love the money ; 
what I do love is the getting of it, the making it. All 
these years of my life I have put into this work and 


8o 


If Christ Came to Chicago. 

now it is my life and I cannot give it up. What other 
interest can you suggest to me? I do not read, I do not 
take any part in politics, what can I do ? But in my 
counting house I am in my element; there I live, and 
the struggle is the very breath of life to me. Besides,” 
he added, “ I think it is well for me to remain in busi¬ 
ness in order to set an example to younger men who are 
coming up around me.” 

Set an example he certainly does, an example which, 
so far as business habits are concerned, punctuality, dis¬ 
patch, close attention to affairs, leaves nothing to be 
desired. But whether such a life is beneficial, that leaves 
the man who pursues it no other interest in the world 
excepting the mere struggle in the competitive arena, is 
a point upon which there will not be much difference of 
opinion. To live for only one interest, and that the 
struggle for victory, whether on the battle-field with the 
sword and cannon or in the market with the no less po¬ 
tent weapons of the modern capitalist, is a life that is 
dwarfed and deficient in most of the elements which 
make men truly men. They come to judge everything 
in the world only from the point of view of money. 

Of this a curious illustration was told me in connec¬ 
tion with Mr. Armour by Mr. Onahan. Some time ago 
the papers were full of their periodical fits of anxiety as 
to the welfare of the Pope. Eeo, it seems, was declared 
to be profoundly uneasy in the Vatican and to be medi¬ 
tating seriously a flight across the sea to some retreat 
where he could find a shelter more to his mind than that 
of the Vatican. The Pope was going here, he was going 
there, he was going to Malta or Spain. Each corres¬ 
pondent had his own story and the air was filled with a 
babel of voices as to the future seat of the Holy See. 

“What is this ? ” said Mr. Armour to Mr. Onahan, 
“what is this I see in the papers about the Pope? Do 
you think the Pope will leave Rome? Where do you 
think the Pope is going to ? ” 

Mr. Onahan said he did not know that the Pope would 


The Chicagoan Trinity. 81 

go anywhere, but if the revolution broke out in Italy he 
might be compelled to take refuge with some friendly 
power. 

“ Why should he not come to Chicago?” said Mr. 
Armour. 

When Mr. Onahan told me this I was much interested, 
because I used to hold up the prospect of coming to 
Chicago before the monsignori of the Vatican as a kind 
of terrible looking forward to of punishment to come. 
When I went to Rome in 1889 one of my objects was to 
ascertain whether or not the Pope contemplated a flight 
from the Eternal City, and in that case to siiggest that 
he had better come to London or to Chicago. Chicago 
was too far afield for him to go at one flight, but if the 
Holy See is to regain the leadership of the world which 
it held when the barbarians overran the Roman Empire 
the Italianization of the papacy must come to an end 
and its English-speaking era be close at hand. I well 
remember the shudder that passed over the Archbishop 
of Ephesus as that octogenarian prelate pictured him¬ 
self and the Sacred College shivering in a blizzard on 
the shores of Lake Michigan. Such a change would 
undoubtedly have quickened promotion among the 
higher ranks of the Catholic hierarchy. I was natur¬ 
ally much interested in hearing that the idea of bringing 
the Pope to Chicago had apparently occurred simultane¬ 
ously to Mr. Armour. 

Mr. Onahan continued his story. “ I explained to 
Mr. Armour,” he said, “ that the Pope was not a meer 
individual, but he was a spiritual sovereign with depart¬ 
ments of state and that it would be impossible for him 
to transfer himself to Chicago as easily as if he were a 
Cook’s tourist. He would require great administration 
buildings.” 

“ I don’t see that that makes any difference,” said Mr. 
Armour. “It is all a question of money, is it not? 
Why could we not form a syndicate, some of us, and take 
up a large plot of land, as large as you like, and put up 


82 


If Christ Came to Chicago. 

buildings and make everything ready for the Pope so 
that he could come and settle here with all his cardi¬ 
nals and congregations, and then,” said Mr. Armour, 
with a twinkle in his eye, “ we should make more 
money by selling what was left of the land than we 
spent in buying the original tract.” 

Here was a disillusion indeed. I had imagined that 
Mr. Armour was sharing my dreams of the future of the 
papacy and of a reformed and English-speaking pope 
acting as director general of the moral forces of the 
world from his new throne on the shores of Lake Michi¬ 
gan, when, lo, the only thought at the back of Mr. 
Armour’s mind was the number of dollars which might 
be made if the Pope were duly exploited by a Chicago 
syndicate with a view to a speculation in real estate! 

It is perhaps only natural for Mr. Armour to look at 
political changes through financial spectacles. The be¬ 
ginning of his colossal fortune was laid by the prescience 
with which he was able to divine the effect which poli¬ 
tics had on prices. It was in the spring of 1865, when 
Mr. Armour was still only a junior partner in a pig kill¬ 
ing firm at Milwaukee, that he made his first million. 
The author of that interesting volume, “ The World’s 
Fair City,” tells the story as follows : 

The price of pork was gradually rising, owing to the great demand 
created by the army, until the spring of 1865, when it was selling at 
$40 a barrel. New York dealers became greatly excited, and believ¬ 
ing that it would go up still higher, bought eagerly all the pork they 
could grasp. Mr. Armour looked upon the situation in a far different 
light. He foresaw that the war was nearly ended and that pork, in¬ 
stead of rising in value, would suddenly collapse. Mr. Armour at 
once started for New York and made a great sensation in Wall Street 
by selling pork short for $40 per barrel. Then came the news of the 
fall of Petersburg ; a change was produced in the pork market. Rich¬ 
mond was taken and the Confederate army surrendered. Then Mr. 
Armour bought the pork for $18 that he had sold for $40 before he 
owned it. This was his first great success in speculation ; it made 
him a millionaire.—Dean’s World’s Fair City, p. 353. 

It would, however, be a mistake to regard Mr. Armour 
as entirely immersed in his business. Within the last two 
or three years he has gained a new interest in life. The 


The Chicagoan Trinity. 83 

foundation of the Armour Institute, that magnificent 
technical college in which young men and young wo¬ 
men of all classes meet together on a common footing to 
equip themselves for the battle of life, has been a great 
benefit to Mr. Armour if to no one else. It is his toy, 
his plaything. Dr. Gunsaulus is its president, but Mr. 
Armour never ceases to brood with paternal care over 
the institution which his liberality has brought into be¬ 
ing. The institute is a great success, so great indeed 
that already the cry is for more of a similar kind. Mr. 
Armour endowed this institute with well nigh two mil¬ 
lion dollars, but not even that magnificent donation has 
been able to provide accommodation for all those who 
have sought it eagerly this year. 

There is nothing that delights Mr. Armour more than 
to be able to help a promising youth who has got the 
capacity in him to succeed, but who finds it impossible 
to take advantage of the course of study provided 
at the institute. In such cases Mr. Armour’s generosity 
is characterized by the delicacy and tact of a generous 
and sympathizing heart. Nothing is more remote from 
his nature than an attempt to make those who profit by 
his bounty feel indebted to him. Everything, indeed, is 
done, to make them feel that they are on a footing with 
the rest of the students. Not that he is indifferent to the 
use which is made of his benefactions; on the contrary, 
he keeps the sharpest lookout upon the recipients of his 
bounty, and if they prove unworthy their allowance is 
speedily stopped. 

If the interest which he takes in the institute and its 
students is a growing interest, instead of it being, as is to 
be feared, somewhat of a toy of which its owner will get 
tired as soon as its novelty has worn off, there may be 
great things in store for Mr. Armour and for Chicago. 
But at present business is still Mr. Armour’s absorbing 
occupation and even his beloved institute is but a sub¬ 
ordinate consideration compared with the fierce joy and 
rapture of the strife which fills Mr. Armour’s heart when 


84 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

bulls and bears are in conflict over the price of wheat or 
there is a speculation about the coming hog crop for the 
season. 

In thinking of Mr. Armour, as of Mr. Field, even when 
we contemplate the lavish generosity with which he 
endows an institution which bears his name, it is difficult 
to forget the ruin of the small tradesmen. Mr. Armour 
feels no compunction, say in conducting a campaign 
against the butchers of Joliet, or any of other town in Illi¬ 
nois or elsewhere, where by the aid of preferential rail¬ 
way rates and his enormous wealth he is able to drive 
into the bankruptcy court the tradesmen who refuse to 
deal with Armour. But it is not surprising that the 
tradesmen who have fought a losing battle and have 
been beaten out of the field regard Mr. Armour’s ascend¬ 
ency with feelings the reverse of pleasurable. Mr. Ar¬ 
mour, however, would contend that he only did on a large 
scale what they were trying to do on a small. He kept 
strictly within the laws of the game and if the weaker 
went to the wall was that any of his lookout? Is not 
vice victis the law all over the world ? 

Indirectly Mr. Armour and his class have played a 
very considerable part in the social revolution which is 
going on in Great Britain. Lady Henry Somerset 
lamented the other day that Armour was rendering it 
difficult for the small farmers on her Gloucestershire 
estates to obtain paying prices for their cattle, and there 
is no doubt that the immense development which Mr. 
Armour and his allies and rivals have been able to give 
to the American meat exporting trade has had a very 
powerful effect upon British politics. The rise or fall of 
a penny in the pound in the price of beef makes all the 
difference between prosperity and penury to the grazier in 
Ireland. The price of Irish cattle is influenced largely 
by the ruling prices in the Chicago market, and much of 
the strength of the Home Rule agrarian agitation in 
Ireland was due to Mr. Armour and others of the same 
class in facilitating the dispatch of American beef to the 


The Chicagoan Trinity. 85 

English market. If many of our aristocrats are little 
better than splendid paupers, as one of their number re¬ 
cently declared, and if Home Rule is within measurable 
range of being obtained, these results are chiefly due to 
Mr. Armour and his class. 

Mr. George M. Pullman, the third member of the 
trinity, is a man of different make. He has made 
the Pullman car a household word in every land for its 
convenience, its comfort and its luxury. Unlike Mr. 
Field, who is said to be a leap year politician, voting only 
once in four years when a president is to be elected, Mr. 
George M. Pullman is an active Republican politician 
well known in Washington, and much esteemed by 
party treasurers to whose campaign funds he has 
been a liberal contributor. Mr. George M. Pullman, in 
addition to many acts of private charity, is notable among 
the millionaires of Chicago as the man who, taking a 
hint from Krupp, endeavored to found a town in his own 
image. The town of Pullman, which was named after 
the author of its being, is a remarkable experiment which 
has achieved a very great success. 

Unlike Mr. Field or Mr. Armour, Mr. Pullman has 
built up his fortune without resorting to the more ruthless 
methods of modern competition. Indeed, his career is 
notable as an instance of competition by high prices 
rather than by low. Mr. Field wiped out the retail 
storemen, and Mr. Armour the small butchers, by under¬ 
selling them. Mr. Pullman has undersold no one. He has 
always succeeded, not by producing a cheaper article but 
by producing a dearer, but the higher priced article was 
so much better that Mr. Pullman succeeded in estab¬ 
lishing a virtual monopoly of one of the most highly 
specialized businesses in the world. This is the more 
remarkable because Mr. Pullman was not originally a 
mechanic. He was merely a man of reflective mind, of 
native ingenuity and of great persistence. The incon¬ 
venience of a journey on the cars before the Pullmans 
were invented turned his attention to the possibility of 


86 If Christ Came to Chicago . 

making the sleeper as comfortable in the cars as in a 
hotel. The moment he set to work to realize his idea he 
was confronted with the fact that it could not be done “ on 
the cheap.” Nothing daunted, he decided it should be 
done at a high price if it could not be done at low. The 
first Pullman car which he constructed and put on the 
rails cost $18,000 to build, as against $4,000, which was 
the price of the ordinary sleeper. Railway men shrug¬ 
ged their shoulders. It was magnificent, they said, but it 
was not business. A palace sleeping car at $18,000 
could not possibly pay. Mr. Pullman refused to be dis¬ 
couraged. “ Ret the traveling public deci le,” was all he 
asked, “ run your old sleepers and the new one together; 
I will charge half a dollar more for a berth in the Pullman 
and see which holds the field.” The verdict of the public 
was instant and decisive; everyone preferred the Pull¬ 
man at the extra price, and the success of the inventive 
car builder was assured. He has gone on step by step, 
from car to car, until at the present moment he is said to 
have a fleet, as he calls it, of nearly 2,000 sleepers, which 
are operated by the Pullman Company. They have be¬ 
sides 58 dining cars and 650 buffet cars. Altogether 
the cars which the company operates number 2,573. 

Other competitors have come into the field, but Mr. 
Pullman deserves the distinction of having placed every 
railway traveler under an obligation by acting as pioneer 
of commodious, luxurious and safe railway traveling. 
After building his cars in various parts, Mr. Pullman 
decided finally to centralize in the center of the American 
continent. Carrying out his decision, he naturally fixed 
upon Chicago as the site for his works. The Pullman 
Company was incorporated with a capital of $30,000,000, 
the quotation for which in the market to-day is twice 
that amount. He took up an estate of over three thou¬ 
sand acres round Lake Calumet, which is fourteen miles 
from the center of Chicago, and which was at that time 
far outside the city limits. There, following the example 
of Messrs. Krupp at Essen, he set to work to construct 


The Chicagoan Trinity. 87 

a model city in his own image. The car works were, of 
course, the center and nucleus of all. In these gigantic 
factories, where 14,000 employes work up 50,000,000 
feet of lumber every year, and 85,000 tons of iron, they 
have a productive capacity of 100 miles of cars per 
annum. Their annual output, when they are working 
at full stretch, is 12,500 freight cars, 313 sleeping cars, 
626 passenger cars and 939 street cars. 

Mr. Pullman’s ambition was to make the city which 
he had built an ideal community. In order to do so he 
proceeded in entire accordance with the dominant feeling 
of most wealthy Americans by ignoring absolutely the 
fundamental principle of American institutions. The 
autocrat of all the Russias could not more absolutely 
disbelieve in government by the people, for the people, 
through the people, than George Pullman. The whole 
city belongs to him in fee simple; its very streets were 
the property of the Pullman Company. Like Tammany 
Hall and various other effective institutions in America, 
not from the broad basis of the popular will, but from 
the apex of the presiding boss. Mr. Pullman was his 
own boss. He laid out the city, and made the Pullman 
Company the terrestrial providence of all its inhabitants. 
Out of a dreary, water-soaked prairie, Mr. Pullman 
reared high and dry foundations, upon which, with the 
aid of his architect and landscape engineer, he planned 
one of the model towns of the American continent. 
Here was a captain of industry acting as the city builder. 
With his own central thought dominating everything 
the city came into existence as a beautiful and harmo¬ 
nious whole. He achieved great results, no doubt. 
Before long the increment of the value of the real 
estate on which Pullman is built is expected to 
amount to as much as the whole capital of the Pullman 
Company. Every house in Pullman is fitted up with 
water and gas and the latest sanitary arrangements. 
Grounds have been laid out for recreation and athletics; 
there is a public library, school house and popular 


88 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

savings 'bank, theater, and a great general store where 
the retail distribution is carried on under the glass roof 
of a beautiful arcade building. It is a town bordered 
with bright beds of flowers and’ stretches of lawns 
which in summertime, at least, are green and velvety. It 
has its parks and its lakes, and its pleasant vistas of 
villas, and, in short, Pullman is a great achievement of 
which not only Chicago but America does well to be 
proud. 

It was not a philanthropic, but a business experiment, 
and none the worse on that account. The great prin¬ 
ciple of quid pro quo was carried out with undeviating 
regularity. If every resident of Pullman had gas laid 
to his house, he was compelled to pay for it at the rate 
of $2.25 a thousand feet, although the cost of its manu¬ 
facture to the Pullman Company was only 33 cents a 
thousand feet. Ample water supply was given, with 
good pressure, but of this necessary of life the Pullman 
Company was able to extract a handsome profit. The city 
of Chicago supplied the corporation with water at 4 
cents a thousand gallons, which was retailed to the Pull- 
manites at 10 cents per thousand, making a profit large 
enough to enable the corporation to have all the water 
it wanted for its works for nothing. Thus did the 
business instinct of Mr. Pullman enable his right hand 
to wash his left, and thereby created at the very thresh- 
hold of Chicago are object lessons as to the commercial 
profits of municipal socialism. But between municipal 
socialism, representing the co-operative effort of a whole 
community voluntarily combining for the purpose of 
making the most of all monopolies of service, and the 
autocratic exploiting of a whole population of a city, 
such as is to be found in Pullman, there is a wide gulf 
fixed. 

As a resident in the model town wrote me, Pullman 
was all very well as an employer, but to live and breath 
and have one’s being in Pullman is a little bit too 
much. The residents in the city, he continued, “ paid 


The Chicagoan Trinity. 89 

rent to the Pullman Company, they bought gas of the 
Pullman Company, they walked on streets owned in fee 
simple by the Pullman Company, they paid water tax 
to the Pullman Company. Indeed, even when they 
bought gingham for their wives or sugar for their tables 
at the arcade or the market-house, it seemed dealing 
with the Pullman Company. They sent their children 
to Pullman’s school, attended Pullman’s church, looked 
at but dared not enter Pullman’s hotel with its private 
bar, for that was the limit. Pullman did not sell them 
their grog. They had to go to the settlement at the 
railroad crossing south of them, to Kensington, called, 
because of its long row of saloons, “bumtown,” and 
given over to disorder. There the moral and spiritual 
disorder of Pullman was emptied, even as the physical 
sewage flowed out on the Pullman farm a few miles 
further south, for the Pullman Company also owned the 
sewerage system, and turned the waste into a fluid, forced 
through pipes and conducted underground to enrich the 
soil of a large farm. The lives of the workingmen 
were bounded on all sides by the Pullman Company; 
Pullman was the horizon in every direction.” 

All this provoked reaction and a feeling of resentment 
sprang up in the model city against the too paternal 
despotism of the city builder, and so it came to pass that 
the citizens by a vote annexed themselves to Chicago, of 
which it is now part and parcel. This was a sore blow 
and a great discouragement to Mr. Pullman. But no 
annexation can destroy his control over the town. It is 
still the property of the corporation of which he is the 
chief and controlling mind. 

But in the civic life of Chicago Mr. Pullman takes no 
part. He may reply that he has done enough for duty 
and more than enough for glory in creating what is a 
model suburb of the city, and if every employer had 
done as much Chicago would have been a very different 
place from what it is to-day. That may be admitted, but 
the fact remains, so far as the administration of Chicago 


90 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

is concerned, Mr. Pullman is almost as much of a non¬ 
entity as Mr. Marshall Field or Mr. Philip Armour. 
Where Mr. Pullman can be autocrat he is willing to exert 
himself; but where he must be one among a multitude, 
although he might be if he chose primus inter pares , he 
will do nothing, no, not even although a little exertion he 
might do everything. He lives in Chicago. His house is 
one of the best built mansions on the lakeside. Compared 
with his lordly pleasure house the residences of Mr. 
Field and Mr. Armour dwindle into homely insignificance 
but at the City Hall we look in vain for any trace of the 
influence which has revolutionized the traveling accom¬ 
modation of the world. 

Mr. Pullman in Chicago is something like the medi¬ 
atized sovereigns in Germany. He is not exactly in the 
sulks, but he has about as much direct influence in the 
city administration as the King of Hanover had in the 
North German Confederation when his kingdom was 
absorbed against the will of its monarch. Field, Armour 
and Pullman, these three each supremely successful in 
his own respective lines, each superbly generous and 
liberal in the matter of private benefaction, all three in¬ 
dustrious, hard working men of business, they are in 
many respects not unworthy to occupy the summit of the 
local Olympus. They all take life seriously, perhaps a 
trifle too seriously. They have each fashioned for them¬ 
selves and their families a luxurious home, but what 
have they done for the city ? What have they contrib¬ 
uted to the good government of Chicago? If Christ 
came to Chicago would these men of many talents be 
able to show a good account of their stewardship ? 

Let us see. What Chicago is suffering from, as a city, 
a want of probity, an almost total lack of ordinary business 
honesty in the transaction of the city’s business. These 
men, are upright and inflexibly honest, how comes it 
that their honesty has no more influence in the City 
Hall than the sickly smile of a December sun has upon an 
Alpine glacier ? These men are among the greatest finan- 


The Chicagoan Trinity . 91 

ciers in the world, the smartest, shrewdest, brainiest men 
to handle dollars and cents whom the United States has 
provided. But the city finances are all in a snarl, the city 
treasury is empty, and Chicago with nearly two thous¬ 
and millions of taxable property has only two hundred 
and fifty millions that can legally be taxed. This is but 
a poor showing as the net outcome of the way in 
which their lives have been lived. For the city is suffer¬ 
ing from the lack of those very qualities of which the 
trinity have been gifted in superabundance beyond all 
their fellows. The spectacle is a sorry one. It reminds us 
of those detested regraters in famine times who stored 
million of quarters of wheat in their granaries and 
watched the people perish of sheer starvation at their 
gates, waiting callously until wheat reached its highest 
point. Is it not even worse? The speculator for a 
rise at least sells when the price suits, but the garnered 
harvest of financial experience, the ripened fruits of 
fifty years business management, which these men have, 
will perish with them. In that the city has no share. 

This surely, is not an ideal condition of things. In 
America and the New World, under the generous stimu¬ 
lus of the Democratic idea, we have a right to look for 
something at least as good as that which is attained in 
the monarchical and aristocratic systems of the older 
world. But instead of being better the plutocratic system 
as it prevails even at its best in Chicago is worse than 
the results obtained by the aristocratic system which 
prevails in England and Germany. I do not for a mo¬ 
ment mean to say that the English plutocrat is not as 
selfish a creature as his American brother. I am not 
speaking of the plutocrats so much as of the territorial 
aristocracy. The principle of noblesse oblige is recog¬ 
nized by the aristocrat as it is not by the plutocrat. 
The obligations of property are recognized and acted 
upon even by a very third rate landlord to an extent to 
which the ordinary holder of consols or of scrip would 
stand aghast. He may be a scamp, sometimes he is ; he 


92 


If Christ Came to Chicago. 

may be dull and stupid, that he very often is; but take 
him as a whole there is more sense of the stewardship 
of wealth and responsibility of personal service among 
the English and German aristocrats than in the monied 
class either in the Old or the New World. 

I suppose that in London the Duke of Westminster 
corresponds somewhat to Mr. Philip Armour, so far as 
wealth and social position is concerned. The Duke of 
Westminster is one of the few nobles that Mr. Philip 
Armour has not helped a long way towards the bank¬ 
ruptcy court. The Duke of Westminster does not draw 
his revenue from beef, or pork, or wheat, he is a ground 
landlord in London. Some time ago Lord Meath said 
to me: “You do not know how hard the Duke of West¬ 
minster works; he has hardly an afternoon or evening 
to himself. I went to see him a month or two ago in 
order to get him to take the chair at some philanthropic 
society. He looked over his note book and said, ‘ I am 
afraid that I have not a spare evening or afternoon which 
I could let you have.’ “But I do not want it this 
week,’ said Lord Meath.” 

“ ‘I am speaking for the whole of this season, ” the 
said, turning over the leaves of his note book again; 

‘ but I find I have one afternoon, and I ought not to 
have kept that back, I admit. But I have reserved that 
afternoon to see Clevedon.’ (Clevedon is one of the 
Duke’s country seats in the neighborhood of London.) 
‘I have never seen it this year,’ he said, ‘ and I had re¬ 
served that afternoon to go and just take a look at it. 
But I will give that up and take your meeting.’ ” 

That is only a little thing; nobody thought about it or 
talked about it. It was all in the days work of an 
ordinary duke. 

There is a good deal of trouble in all this, but it is toil 
and trouble for which there is an ample reward, not 
merely in the security which it gives to the system that is 
based upon the consciousness of service rendered to the 
people, but also in the immense multiplicity of inter- 


93 


The Chicagoan Trinity. 

ests which it gives to life. The Duke of Westminster 
may not be an ideal citizen, but he at least is in no dan¬ 
ger of degenerating into a mere money-rake. He faces 
life at many points and he is compelled to share it with 
his fellow men. He has other interests than the per¬ 
petual scheming to anticipate a rise or fall in the price 
of wheat or pork, and so it would be with every one who 
did the same amount of work for his fellow men. 

The ancient Greeks had a keener appreciation of the 
virtue of this altruistic service than the Christian Demo¬ 
cracy of the present century. As Frederick Harrison 
has recently reminded us, in the republics of ancient 
Greece the Democracy did not think it safe to rely upon 
what may be called the voluntary altruism of their 
wealthy neighbors. If in Athens, for instance, or in any 
of the other Greek cities, a 'citizen had grown wealthy 
and multiplied his estates, it was considered well within 
the prerogative of the community to saddle that gentle¬ 
man with the duty of contributing both in purse and 
person for the general welfare. He says: 

At Athens, the liturgies were legal and constitutional offices, imposed 
periodically and according to a regular order, by each local community, 
on citizens rated as having a capital of more than a given amount. 
As magistrates and ministers certain men of wealth were charged with 
the cost and production of the public dramas, choruses, processions, 
games, embassies, and feasts. In times of war they were called on to 
man and arm a ship for the fleet * * * It always remained a 
public service , an honorary distinction, a coveted office, a duty to be 
filled by taste, skill, personal effort, and public spirit. No millionaire 
ever seems to think of giving his fellow-citizens a series of free 
musical entertainments, a historic pageant, much less a free dramatic 
performance,” as did the liturgists of Greece. 

No Anarchist or Communist is working so desperately” to hurry 
on their abolition as are the rich men themselves.* 

If some such institution as the Greek liturgies were 
established in Chicago, it would be opposed as a tyr¬ 
annical interference with the rights of the private 
property and of individual freedom. But at present 
no one suggests such a thing. Even the mild and tenta- 

* “ The Uses of Rich Men in a Republic,” by Mr. Frederic Harrison, Forum , 
December, 1893. 



94 


If Christ Came to Chicago. 

tive proposal of an income tax, now being discussed at 
Washington, has excited a whirlwind of indignation on 
the part of the wealthy classes, who are going great 
lengths in their efforts to persuade the masses of the peo¬ 
ple that the income tax is class legislation and therefore 
repugnant to American principles ! 

All that is asked is that, instead of setting an example 
before the coming generation of business men in Chicago 
of cynical neglect of civic duty and indifference to the 
responsibilities and obligations of citizenship, Messrs. 
Field, Armour and Pullman should do their duty to the 
city. 

Some four years ago, when the first London County 
Council was about to be elected, Mr. McDougall, a 
chemical manufacturer in the east end of London, 
had arrived at a point in his business career when 
he could retire from the manufacture of chemicals 
or renew his partnership with every prospect of doubling 
his fortune. He was in the prime of his life and had 
amassed a moderate competence, not probably a hundreth 
part of the fortune of Mr. Field, but still enough to enable 
him to live comfortably until the end of his days. There 
was great need for capable citizens in the London County 
Council, and after a long and prayerful consideration Mr. 
McDougal decided that his duty both to God and man 
demanded that he should give up his business and devote 
the rest of his life to the service of the city. He did so, 
and was elected to the County Council. For the last four 
years he has worked steadily in the Council for six hours a 
day every week in the year as hard as he formerly worked 
in the counting house at his chemical works. Whereas 
he formerly worked for himself, he now works for the 
city. With this result among other things: 

Among the multifarious duties which the London 
County Council has inherited from the churches, the 
care of mentally afflicted is one of the greatest. The 
Council stands in loco parentis to 11,000 insane persons, 
who are housed in great asylums scattered round the 


95 


The Chicagoan Trinity. 

metropolis, every one of whom absolutely depends for 
their daily bread upon the city authorities. Mr. 
McDougall, who is a humane man, was appointed to the 
Asylums Committee, and be dedicated to the task of allevi¬ 
ating the miseries of these afflicted ones all the energy of 
his nature. It is largely due to his exertions that the 
percentage of discharges has risen from forty-five per 
cent to fifty-two per cent. That is to say, as the direct 
result of the improved administration in asylums, brought 
about by the self-denying labors of such men as Mr. 
McDougall in the London County Council, from seven 
hundred to eight hundred lunatics were discharged cured 
last year, who would still have been in the asylums if the 
old system had prevailed and Mr. McDougall had gone 
on making an increased fortune in chemicals instead of 
dedicating the rest of his life to the service of his fellow 
citizens. There is ample work of a similar kind waiting 
to reward the genius of Mr. Field, Mr. Armour and Mr. 
Pullman, if they would but consecrate the remainder of 
their lives to the service of the city to which they owe so 
much. 

It is not so much by the direct abuse of the power 
which money gives that the millionaire of to-day will 
be weighed in the balance and found wanting; it is not 
so much the sins of commission as those of omission 
which lie piled at his door. 

Great wealth, unless greatly used, will not be left long 
in the administration of individual men. If it be true 
that the getting and hoarding absorbs the whole of 
the gray matter in the millionaire’s brain, then we 
shall not have long to wait before we shall see the 
crystallizing of the inarticulate unrest of the suffering 
multitude in the conviction that there should be a di¬ 
vision of labor, and that while the millionaire should 
be allowed to get his millions, the elected represen¬ 
tatives of the Democracy should decide the way in 
which it should be spent and distributed. The mil¬ 
lionaire would thus be relieved of the burden of looking 


96 


If Christ Came to Chicago. 

after his millions, and could devote the whole of his 
time and energy to the more congenial task of amassing 
them. 

No necessary work can long be left neglected, and if 
millionaires will not distribute their own wealth and use 
their great position with great souls and hearts, they 
will find that they will come to be regarded by the 
hungry and thirsty Demos much as compensation reser¬ 
voirs are regarded by the inhabitants of the cities who 
have constructed them to replenish the stream which 
their thirst would otherwise drink dry. These great 
fortunes of $70,000,000 and $100,000,000 and $300,000,- 
000 will come to be regarded as the storage service upon 
which mankind draw in seasons of scarcity and drought. 
That is the use which society will make of its million¬ 
aires, if millionaires do not anticipate the inevitable by 
utilizing their millions. Some people imagine that the 
progress of Democratic Socialism will tend to discourage 
the accumulation of these huge fortunes; it is more 
likely that Demos will regard his millionaires as the 
cottager regards his bees. These useful insects spend 
the livelong summer day in collecting and hoarding up 
in their combs the golden plunder of a thousand flowers, 
but when the autum comes the bee wishes to take its 
rest and enjoy the fruits of its summer toil. But the 
result does not altogether correspond with the expecta¬ 
tions of the bee. 

The supreme test of every institution is not how does 
it help the few who are inside, but how does it help 
the million who are outside. Christ’s test, “ the least of 
these my brethren,” is the one eternal test. That which 
does not help the common man and the common woman 
to make their lives human, at least, if not divine, stands 
marked as a brand for the burning, whither have been 
hurried by the inexorable destinies the noblesse of 
the ancien regime , by road of the guillotine, and the 
slave-holders of the South, by way of Gettysburg and 
Appomattox Court House. 


The Chicagoan Trinity . 97 

That is what I meant when I said that the millionaire 
would go the way of the Pottawatomies, and as Black 
Partridge is remembered for his kindly and grateful 
rescue of the Kinzie’s daughter, when all the rest of his 
tribe are forgotten, so it may be that the memory of the 
Field Museum and the Armour Institute and the Pull¬ 
man city will be fragrant in the mind of men long after 
the last millionaire has joined the last of the Pottawato- 
mies in the happy hunting grounds of the Summerland. 









CHAPTER V. 

WHO ARE THE DISREPUTABLES? 

If Christ came to Chicago he would find that many of 
the citizens have forgotten the existence of any moral 
law apart from that which is embodied in the state or 
municipal legislation. The idea of the law of God 
as distinct from the statute book seems to have largely 
died out in the hearts of many men. In their opinion 
it is sufficient that their conduct is legal. If it is 
legal it must be right. When I was at Detroit I had 
a very interesting conversation with an alderman, 
a German who had been educated for the priesthood, 
but who had forsaken the sacred calling, and had be¬ 
come an out and out freethinker. He argued strenuously 
that there was no need for any other law whatever 
beyond the state law or the municipal ordinances ; that 
they covered the whole area of human action, and that 
other law there was none. Religion, he said, was only 
ceremonial. If a man obeyed the state law he did his 
whole duty to his fellow men. The same from this sen¬ 
timent has sprung the prevailing conviction, especially in 
commercial and political circles, that anything that 
does not land a man in the penitentiary is permissible. 
There is a wide region within which conduct may be 
legal but nevertheless supremely wrong, but this does 
not seem to have made its way into the moral conscious¬ 
ness of many American citizens. The law of God is 
exceeding broad. It is in vain with the man-made 
yardstick of human ordinances to endeavor to supply a 
substitute for this invisible, impalpable, all-pervading 
higher law. 

It is not thirty years sinoe in this very state of Illi¬ 
nois, as Governor St. John told me the other day, he 


loo If Christ Caine to Chicago. 

was prosecuted for the great and heinous crime of giving 
food to a black boy under the so-called Black Act which 
was then on the statute book. Illinois legislative wis¬ 
dom endeavoring to formulate the eternal truth and the 
divine law into a human statute, decreed in its wisdom 
that any person who fed a negro, excepting under such 
circumstances as were by statute provided, could be sent 
to the penitentiary for a minimum term of two years, 
with an additional fine. Governor St. John, who was the 
last prosecuted under this act, cleared that iniquity from 
the statute book. But with such evidence on every 
hand as to the absolute antagonism between divine law 
and human statutes, it is marvelous to hear good people, 
as well as bad, talking as if the mere compliance with 
written law was sufficient to justify a man in any course 
of iniquity which he may chose to pursue. “It is not 
my business to look into the questions of right or wrong ; 
that is for the law to do,” is a formula which is frequently 
heard in the city. 

The citizen who argued this point most strenuously was 
a man who owned property used as a house of 
prostitution in the levee district. I sent him a circular 
calling his attention to the fact that he was guilty of an 
offense in allowing his premises to be so used. He first 
of all said that he was thoroughly convinced that 
some one was behind me and that there was a deal in 
real estate somewhere or other in connection with that 
circular. I assured him that there was nothing of the 
kind, and then we went on to discuss the question. He 
denied that he knew anything of the character of her 
tenants; then he said he was perfectly willing to let the 
house to a church for the purpose of a Sunday School 
if it would pay him as much rent as he received at 
present. “ You see,” said he, “ they pay me about twice 
as much as I could get from anybody else.” 

“Well,” I said, “that may be. But if they are using 
it for purposes of vice?” 

“ I have nothing to do with that,” he replied. “ That 


Who Are the Disreputables f ioi 

is not my business, if there is anything wrong it is for 
the city to look after that What I have to do is to see 
to it that I receive my rent.” 

“Without any regard as to the character of your 
tenants ? ” I asked. 

“Without any regard as to the character of my 
tenants. Why should I look into those things ? That 
is not my duty. If there is anything wrong with them 
the authorities must do their duty. I will do mine— 
that is to look after my rent.” 

“ But,” I said, “ let us leave the question of prostitu¬ 
tion out of the question. Supposing that these people 
were thieves and that they used your house for the pur¬ 
pose of storing their stolen goods ? ” 

“ If they would pay me $3 where I would only get $1 
from honest tenants certainly I would let them have it.” 

“ Would it not then make you a partner with the rob¬ 
bers ? ’ ’ 

“No,” said he, “I am simply a landlord, and my 
concern is with the dollar. Questions of right and 
wrong such as you are raising are for the city, not for 
me.” 

“Well,” I said, “let us go a little further. Supposing 
that these were murderers and your premises were made 
the headquarters of a gang of thugs, who sallied forth 
every evening to murder the citizens and bring back 
their gory scalps to your house. Would you, knowing 
what they were, let them the house? ” 

“ If they would pay me $3 in the place of $1 which 
I could get from an ordinary tenant, certainly, I would 
let it to them directly. I am after the dollar, as every 
one else is, if they would only say so. As long as I keep 
within the law that is enough. 

Here we have asserted, in its baldest and plainest 
form, the working principle on which the smart man of 
Chicago acts. Everything that is not illegal is assumed 
by him to be right, no matter how dishonorable 
it may be, no matter how infamous it may be, or 


102 If Christ Came to Chicago . 

cruel it may be; so long as it is permitted by law, 
or so long as they can evade the law by any subterfuge, 
they consider they are doing perfectly right. They 
believe in the state ; they have ceased to believe in God. 
A man is considered honest, no matter how great a 
scoundrel he may be, so long as he keeps within 
the limits of the law. In like manner a woman is 
considered respectable and of good repute, no matter 
how false, vain, idle and selfish she may be so long as 
she refrains from publicly advertising her loss of chastity. 
A man may be a thief, all the same, even though his 
plunder is legalized by an ordinance, and a woman 
may be disreputable, although she may move in the first 
set of the four hundred. These two elementary truths 
seem to have startled many people in Chicago when I 
enunciated them, as if they were heresies, not to say 
blasphemies, against the social order. Heresies and 
blasphemies though they may be called, they are sacred 
truths, and if Christ came to Chicago, and were still of 
the same mind that he was when he walked in Judea, 
He would probably have said the same things with much 
greater emphasis. 

It is very odd to see how there has risen up a kind of 
descendant of the noxious weed of the right divine of 
kings to do wrong in the shape of the social idea that a rich 
man must necessarily be '‘respectable.” As a matter of 
fact rich men and women are often, owing to the temp¬ 
tations which beset them, the most disreputable members 
of the community ; and it is one of the heaviest indict¬ 
ments against the millionaire class, when it is not 
steadied by responsibility and alive to its obligations, 
that it tends inevitably to produce a class of mortals 
which any well-regulated community would be justified in 
sinking in the nearest bog until the breath had left their 
body. Such was the treatment to which the ancient Ger¬ 
mans resorted when their tribe was disgraced by a 
coward. Such is the treatment which might fairly be 
resorted to when a community breeds such social abor- 


Who Are the Disreputables ? 103 

tions as the idle and the vicious rich. They are the 
social cancers of modern civilization, and it is they, not 
their hard-working fathers who have built up their 
fortunes, who will bring the class of millionaires to 
destruction. In the previous chapter I have referred to 
the trinity of Chicagoan millionaires, who represent the 
merits of their class. Unfortunately, as the sunlight is 
accompanied by a shadow, so over against the Chicago 
trinity there must be placed a companion picture, the 
diabolical counterpart of the benevolent and the public- 
spirited rich. Field, Armour and Pullman and their 
class, millionaires who regard themselves more or less 
as “God Almighty’s money bags,” who accept the 
stewardship of the money which has been intrusted 
to them, and who honestly desire to make the best use 
of their millions, constitute a class which, notwithstand¬ 
ing their shortcomings from the civic point of view, is 
worthy of considerable admiration. But side by side with 
those men, are others who use their inherited wealth 
for the worst purposes. These constitute what may be 
called the diabolism of Chicago. They can be conven¬ 
iently divided into two classes, the predatory and the 
idle rich. 

Concerning the predatory poor, all are agreed. It 
does not matter what temptation the man has been 
under or how severe the physical pressure under which 
he is put, if a man is a thief in the ordinary acceptation 
of the term that is the end of it. No conditions of 
extenuating circumstances are allowed to stand in the 
way of instant and ruthless condemnation of society. 
“ He who takes what isn’t his’n, when he’s kotched is 
sent to prison,” is the rule acted upon almost automatic- 
cally by all civilized society in the Old World and the 
New. But the theft must be from an individual, other¬ 
wise the moral sense which is so prompt to vindicate 
the rights of private property does not assert itself. 
The old rhyme in England which contrasts the severity 
of the punishment of those who stole a goose from the 


104 V Christ Came to Chicago. 

common while nothing whatever was done to those who 
stole the common from the goose is as applicable as 
ever in the new conditions of the Western World. 

This is partially due to a deficiency of the imagina¬ 
tion, and also to the well-known fact, that what is every¬ 
body’s business is nobody’s business. A man who robs 
me of a dollar inflicts a wrong upon a definite individ¬ 
ual, which leads me to actively resent the theft, and if 
possible to secure the speedy punishment of the thief. But 
fi the theft is committed, not on a definite John Smith or 
William Jones, but on a million such, and if the loss falls 
not upon a private purse, but the collective purse of a 
whole community, the indignation is so diffused as to be 
unappreciable as a force. There is no public prosecu¬ 
tor for thefts committed upon public property. The com¬ 
mon weal is left to take its chances and as a result it 
fares very badly. Hence, the predatory classes in the 
community are naturally attracted to property which 
can be filched with impunity. This is equally true of 
all thieves, whether they be rich or poor. As a rule, 
however, property that is held in community is not of a 
kind that can be easily appropriated by the poor thief. 
To rob the city demands capital. And when brigandage 
is to be organized on a great scale the enterprise is 
usually above the means of the ordinary pickpocket or 
burglar. But the man does not cease to be a thief be¬ 
cause his robbery is conducted on a great scale, and still 
less deserves to be freed from the opprobrium attaching 
to dishonor because his robberies are conducted by means 
of a conspiracy and a corporation. Indeed, the more 
closely the matter is looked into, the more clearly will 
it be perceived that, while the garrotter and the foot-pad 
are poor enough specimens of humanity, they are, for 
the most part, infinitely less to be condemned than the 
wealthier scoundrels who wear broadcloth, pay pew 
rent and show an unfaltering front as respectable men. 
It would be unfair to hold the individual personally 
responsible for every crime against society of which 


Who A?'e the Disreputables f 105 

they are themselves to a certain extent a product. 
There are wide tracts of territory even in Europe where 
brigandage is regarded as an honorable profession. In 
some parts of Italy and Sicily it used not to be uncom¬ 
mon for the brigand to regularly attend the confession 
to be shriven once a month or once a quarter, as the case 
might be, when he found time to spare from his more 
exciting avocations. It was not so very long ago when 
piracy was regarded as a laudable profession for an Eng- 
glish gentleman, and in still more recent times, pious, 
humane and God-fearing merchants saw nothing con¬ 
trary to the moral law in equipping vessels for the slave 
trade. So it would be uncharitable and unjust to con¬ 
found the traffickers in public franchises, the trespassers 
on public property and the rest of the horde of wealthy 
brigands who are at this moment wallowing in the en¬ 
joyment of immense fortunes which they have plundered 
from the people, as if they were consciously as guilty as 
their poorer brethren, who, from time to time, are en¬ 
tertained at the expense of the city in the Bridewell or 
the penitentiary. But their offense is infinitely greater. 
When the slave trade was defined as the sum of all 
villianies, many estimable church members were sorely 
scandalized by the definition, which implied that they 
were the supreme villians of their time. Their own 
descendants to-day would not object to the statement. 
So in fifty years the grandchildren of many public rob¬ 
bers will admit that their fortunes were founded on acts 
of spoliation morally as indefensible as any of those 
that are treated as penitentiary offenses. 

Regarded from the standpoint of an erring fellowman, 
there is a great deal to be said in extenuation of the 
offenses of many of the predatory poor which cannot be 
alleged in defense of the predatory rich. Take for in¬ 
stance the case of an ordinary crook who is at present 
serving his time in Joliet. 

He may be, and very often is, the son of a ne’er-do- 
well, perhaps born of a nameless father on the highway; 


106 If Christ Came to Chicago . 

limited from his infancy by society, regarding the 
“copper” as his natural enemy. He grows up half 
educated or not educated at all. If he reads anything, 
it is probably detective stories, which form so large 
a part of the current literature of the English-speaking 
world on both sides of the sea. He robs for his living 
—gets sometimes one dollar, sometimes a hundred. 
Every now and then he is run into the police station 
and sent to the Bridewell or perhaps to the peniten¬ 
tiary. When he conies out he is still more of an 
outlaw. He is a jail bird and there is no place for 
him in the ranks of order and industry. So some day, 
down on Michigan Avenue or one of your other fine 
avenues, he crouches in the shade and holds up one of 
the citizens of Chicago and relieves him of his pocket- 
book. He is bad enough and ought to be laid by the 
heels in jail. There is, however, one good thing about 
him: he knows that he deserves to be so dealt with 
and so does everybody else in the community. There 
is no cant about your thief. He does not talk learnedly 
about the blessed law of competition or of political 
economy. He does not lay as salve to his conscience 
texts more or less misapplied, he simply takes his gun 
and holds a man up. 

Take another class of men. These are not so bold; 
they are what we call in England area thieves. They 
are sneak thieves who wait until they can get hold 
of some man servant, or servant girl, and by promises of 
sharing the plunder, induce them to help them to the 
silver plate. He also knows that he is a thief and that 
if he is caught he will be sent to prison, and it will serve 
him right. 

It is bad to rob your fellowmen on the street, but it is 
worse to rob your fellowmen of a whole street. It is bad 
to get hold of a servant girl and either by promises of 
plunder or by threats to induce her to guide you to the 
place where the silver spoons lie ; but that dwindles 
into a comparative insignificance compared with what 


io7 


Who Are the Disreputables ? 

is done continually in Chicago by wealthy men, who 
bribe aldermen to give them franchises which belong to 
the citizens. 

Of the predatory rich in Chicago there are plenty 
and to spare, but there is one man who stands out 
conspicuous among all the rest. He may not be a 
greater sinner than the rest of his neighbors, but he 
has succeeded in doing with supreme success what a 
great number of his fellow citizens have done or tried to 
do and failed. I refer to Mr. Charles T. Yerkes. Mr. 
Yerkes is a notable product of the present system. Of 
course, though Mr. Yerkes at an early stage in his 
career, before he was launched upon Chicago as a finan¬ 
cier and street railway magnate, had served in a Penn¬ 
sylvania penitentiary, I would not for a moment suggest 
that in his operations in Chicago he has brought him¬ 
self within the clutches of the law. He who is once bit 
is twice shy, and the period of seclusion which he passed 
in the state establishment in the Eastern seaboard prob¬ 
ably sufficed to convince him of the necessity for keeping 
strictly within the law of the land. But as a matter of 
fact Mr. Yerkes himself would be the last to complain 
of being classed among those who have become wealthy 
by the adroit appropriation of public property. Mr. 
Yerkes practically owns two systems of Chicago’s street 
railways, the West and the North. Both the franchises, 
which make each of those lines worth more than most 
of the gold mines now worked in the States, were 
acquired by him without the payment of any adequate 
consideration to the city. No doubt the ordinances by 
which the franchises were originally granted were 
strictly legal and duly conveyed to Mr. Yerkes the priv¬ 
ileges which are worth to him and his corporation 
millions of dollars per annum. But without questioning 
for a moment the legality of his title, even the most 
charitable of his friends shrug their shoulders when 
asked how it was the City Council showered such lavish 
generosity upon this immigrant from a Philadelphia pen- 


io8 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

itentiary. It could hardly be for love of his beautiful 
eyes, nor can we suppose that Mr. Yerkes exercised any 
hypnotic power or fascination over the city fathers in 
the City Council. All that we know is that franchise 
after franchise was conferred upon Mr. Yerkes with¬ 
out any adequate consideration being paid for them. 
Two tunnels which the city had constructed under 
the river at an expenditure of millions of the city’s 
money were handed over to him for equivalents which 
did not amount to more than twenty-five cents on the 
dollar. It is not too much to say that the City Council 
has given Mr. Yerkes and Mr. Yerkes’ companies from 
time to time franchises, tunnels and monopoly rights 
which, if put upon the market to-day, could not be worth 
less than $25,000,000. Mr. Yerkes would certainly not 
be disposed to sell for less than that sum. But we may 
search the records of the city treasury from end to end 
without finding that the citizens received from him in re¬ 
turn five per cent on the whole of this gigantic sum. 
What everyone in Chicago asserts is that the city 
fathers were bribed at so much a head to grant the fran¬ 
chises. No one can say that Mr. Yerkes bribed them ; 
of that there is no legal proof—as little as there is that 
they were bribed. But if the mistress of a stately mansion 
in Prairie Avenue were to find her most valuable diamond 
ring on the finger of an Italian organ grinder who had 
been observed on terms of suspicious intimacy with her 
lady’s maid, she would not hesitate to suspect that lady’s 
maid very strongly, neither would she admit for a 
moment that the impecunious organ grinder had ob¬ 
tained possession of her diamond by any legal means. 
Just so in this case of Mr. Yerkes. The franchises 
are in his possession at this moment; of that there can 
be no doubt. Equally indubitable is the fact that the 
citizens with whose property these franchises make free 
have received no adequate consideration therefor. They 
were obtained by the votes of aldermen notoriously corrupt 
and from those three indubitable facts it cannot be said 


log 


Who Are the Disreputables % 

to be an uncharitable or far-fetched conclusion to assume 
that Mr. Yerkes has no reason to complain of being 
awarded a very conspicuous place in the ranks of the 
predatory rich. As the man said when asked if the 
fox had stolen the goose, “ I would not like to say what 
I cannot prove, but I saw a good many feathers 
around his nose as he left the yard.” Mr. Yerkes’ 
nose is well feathered, indeed. 

Rightly or wrongly, the citizens have an incurable 
suspicion of Mr. Yerkes, and whenever a franchise 
is going for a railway, surface or elevated, the imme¬ 
diate suggestion is that Mr. Yerkes is behind it. “ I 
want to know if Mr. Yerkes owns Chicago,” asked 
an indignant speaker at a meeting recently. Mr. 
Yerkes does not own Chicago. He only owns the 
greater part of it that is worth—well, not stealing, but 
conveying, the wise call it. Hence, when you ask a 
citizen if Mr. Yerkes is to be trusted to deal honestly 
with the city on matters of franchises the reply is al¬ 
most invariably couched in similar terms to those with 
which the negro witness baffled the too searching inquiry 
of a judge as to whether the accused was or was not a no¬ 
torious chicken thief. “Well, Massa,” said Sambo 
“ I don’t know about that, but if I were a chicken and 
saw that darky loafing around, I would take care to 
roost very high.” 

Mr. Yerkes, having acquired so many millions from 
the city of Chicago, graciously deigns, now and then, 
of his munificence to throw a sop or two to the public. 
It was he who put up the electric fountain in kin- 
coin Park, which, however, might be regarded as 
a very shrewd business speculation, for the greater the 
attraction in Lincoln Park the more dense was the 
packing in Mr. Yerkes’ cars. He, also, in his benevolence 
offered prizes for competition to the pupils in the public 
schools — prizes which, on the principle of not looking 
a gift horse in the mouth, were graciously accepted by 
the Board of Education. This form of benevolence was, 


I IO 


If Christ Came to Chicago. 

however, discontinued after some of the school children 
had ventured to petition the autocrat for a slight im¬ 
provement in the provision made by the street railway 
for conveying them to school. By way of diverting 
the attention of inquisitive eyes which would keep 
squinting into his franchises he gave $250,000 for 
the construction of the largest telescope in the world, 
of which the University of Chicago is to be the 
proud possessor when finished. It is much better for 
people like Mr. Yerkes that the scrutinizing gaze of 
the public should be turned to the heavens than to the 
scandalous manner in which he neglects his obligations 
to the people. It is probable, however, that Mr. Yerkes, 
grown insolent by the impunity with which he has 
ridden roughshod over the people of Chicago, has over¬ 
reached himself. Had his railways been up to the 
standard of street car conveniences, had he used the 
power which he so mysteriously obtained in order to 
meet the necessities of the traveling community, he 
might have continued in unmolested possession of his 
monopolies. Freebooters in olden times were able to 
acquire a certain degree of popularity even among those 
whom they plundered, by the genial free-handedness 
with which they would scatter largess among the 
crowd. Mr. Yerkes may repent too late of his indif¬ 
ference to the welfare and convenience of the public. 

Mr. Yerkes is a significant sample of the class to which 
I refer. He lives in style, and apparently does not find 
it difficult to obtain the assistance of the gentlemen of 
Chicago in the managing of his companies. There are 
too many like him on a smaller scale. You can not 
drive a mile in any direction in Chicago without coming 
on instances of public plunder, only less heinous than 
those that are associated with the name of Mr. Yerkes. 
It is notorious that the franchises which have enabled 
the railway companies to lay no less than 1,900 miles of 
track through the heart of the city have been in many, 
if not most, cases due to corruption. Rich corporations 


111 


Who Are the Disreputables f 

have used their wealth, as a brigand uses his carbine, in 
order to possess themselves of their neighbors’ goods. 
And this system of public plunder will continue un¬ 
checked until the principle that the receiver is as bad as 
the thief is applied to all holders of franchises for which 
no adequate equivalent has been paid to the community, 
as well as to the fraudulent pawnbroker who acts as the 
banker of the light-fingered gentry who convey the 
watches of the citizens to the keeping of their “uncle.” 

The second division of the disreputables, and who are 
even more disreputable and a greater danger to the com¬ 
munity than the predatory rich, are the idle, frivolous and 
vicious rich. Chicago has hitherto been spared the 
presence of many of these social cancers. This is due to 
the fact that the city is so new that it has not yet 
had time to breed an idle crowd. Again and again 
Chicago has been swept by national and public 
calamities, and most of her citizens have been con¬ 
stantly employed from the foundation of the city 
until now. The war, the great fire, the financial 
panic of 1873, have in turn swept away much of 
the realized wealth of the community and com¬ 
pelled successive generations to give their whole 
attention to the garnering of the golden grain. But a 
new generation is springing up of men and women born 
in the lap of luxury, shielded from childhood from all 
the rude blasts of adverse fortune, and endowed neither 
by precept or example with any idea as to their duties 
to the community in which they live. 

The young noble in Europe enters upon a public ca¬ 
reer almost as soon as he is out of college. His course at 
the university finished, he steps at once into public sendee 
of one kind or another. He stands for Parliament, or the 
County Council, and he takes a seat on the bench. He is 
initiated into the administration of his estates. In a thou¬ 
sand ways he is reminded, not so much by precept as by 
the way in which the social machine works, that he has to 
take his place and do his duty in the exalted sphere in 


H2 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

which it nas pleased Providence to place him. The 
plutocrat’s child is shut out from this beneficent min¬ 
istry of service. If, as usually happens, the son con¬ 
ceives a postive distaste for the ant-like hoarding up of 
money, he is left without an object in life. Here and 
there, perhaps, a few studious young men devote them¬ 
selves to science or literature, but they are few and far 
between. For the most part they scout a public career. 
It is bad form for a well-to-do citizen and member of the 
Chicago four hundred to enter his son for the position 
of alderman. To be an elected representative of the 
city of Chicago in the municipal council is counted a 
disgrace and it is even worse to sit in the State legisla¬ 
ture. A story is told of a pupil in the public schools 
who resented as an insult the imputation that his father 
was an alderman. A youth without an object, without 
an ideal beyond that of mere social success, and with 
wealth beyond the dreams of avarice at his disposal, is 
in a position perilous indeed. 

Tong ago in Switzerland I was much impressed by 
the remarks made to me by Herr Boss, the veteran Al¬ 
pine climber, who managed the great hotel of the Bear 
at Grindelwald. Sitting on the stoop one evening look¬ 
ing out over the great expanse of the Bernese Oberland 
and talking of the workings of Democracy in Switzer¬ 
land, Boss suddenly exclaimed, “ Do you know what 
is the secret of the success of the Swiss Democracy? 
Do you know what it is that has enabled us to keep all 
these years a free republic, independent and strong, in 
the midst of monarchical Europe ? ” I suggested their 
schools, their popular system of government, and other 
things which naturally occurred to the mind. “No,” 
said he, “ it is none of these. The secret of the strength 
of Switzerland lies in this: we have realized that any 
citizen who is not employed in some responsible work 
for the community is a bad citizen, and a source of 
danger to the republic. For instance,” he said, “ in this 
valley of Grindelwald you will not find a householder 


Who Are the Disreputables f 113 

who has not some duty to perforin for which he is per¬ 
sonally responsible. It may be a very small duty, but 
it is a duty, and its performance is exacted by local public 
sentiment finding expression in the Commune. When 
a young man is finishing his course at college or at 
the gymnasium, and is about to return to his village 
and build a house for himself, the elders of the Commune 
come together and discuss what he shall be given to do. 
It may be only the supervision of a village pump, or the 
looking after the water course that comes down the 
mountain side, or the custody of the fire engine. It does 
not matter what it is, but before that young man returns 
from college and begins life as a householder in the little 
village there is a distinct duty set apart for him which 
he is expected to discharge. It is essential,” said Boss 
“ An unemployed citizen who had no duty laid upon 
him would be an irresponsible critic and fault finder. 
He would not feel himself attached by any binding tie to 
the community, and in a very short time he would be¬ 
come a center for all that is bad. The prevention of 
that is the secret of the success of the Swiss Democracy.” 

Boss’s words often recurred to my mind when I saw in 
Chicago how many young, rich, cultured men, dowered 
with endless opportunity for serving the city, did nothing 
and cared nothing for its welfare. 

This is the plague spot in Chicago which eats far 
more deeply into the vitals of the community than fifty 
sporting houses or one thousand saloons. It is impossi¬ 
ble not to be moved with compassion in contemplating 
the monotonous round of the social treadmill in the sacred 
circle of Chicago society. When you have got money and 
got plenty of it you have arrived, and you cannot get any 
higher except by getting more money. And if you have 
no taste for piling up a monstrous pedestal of dollars, 
there is singularly little to excite interest. The ma¬ 
chinery of dissipation which has been organized for cen¬ 
turies in such capitals as Paris and Vienna is only in 
its rudimentary state on the shores of Hake Michigan. 


114 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

There are social jealousies no doubt as keen between pork 
butchers and hotel keepers as between dukes and princes 
of the blood. It is sad to see the same snobbery and 
u tuft hunting ” which have been the laughing stock 
of all sensible men in aristocratic Europe reproduc¬ 
ing themselves in a new society, where the distinc¬ 
tion between those who are in the first file and those 
who are in the last is almost indistinguishable to the 
uninstructed eye of the casual observer. But there is no 
doubt of the power of the desire to obtain a foot-hold 
and to climb a little higher up than the social stratum in 
which you were born. Newspapers in Chicago have 
been named whose proprietors are so swayed by the de¬ 
sire of their wives for social distinction that it is impos¬ 
sible to rely upon them for an unhesitating and unspar¬ 
ing attack upon municipal or social abuses which com¬ 
mand the approval of the keepers of the keys of the 
social paradise. 

Many tales, more or less malicious, are told of some 
of the wealthy men of Chicago. Disraeli long ago de¬ 
scribed the English aristocracy as barbarians, who never 
read books and who live in the open air. The first part 
of that remark may be applied to many of the wealthy 
men who have the means to establish themselves in 
palaces on the Chicagoan avenues. The story is told of 
one such, that when he furnished his house he ordered 
as part of the furnishings so many yards of books. It 
was necessary, he heard, that books should form a part 
of the upholstery of his palace. So he ordered them by 
the yard and paid for them accordingly. iVnother of 
the same kind, when showing his library to an English 
visitor, asked whether the bindings suited the furniture, 
“Because,” he said, “I don’t know anything about 
books, but if you don’t think the binding suits the 
furniture, I will have them all rebound at once.” 
These stories do not apply, however, to the younger 
men, who are for the most part supplied with the 
best education that the colleges can furnish. Culture, 


Who Are the Disreputables? 115 

however, even when combined with wealth, does not 
supply the saving grace of the enthusiasm of humanity. 
Neither does it give its possessor a passport to that 
healthy and varied existence which can only be reached 
when one lives in the close and constant contact of 
service with his fellow men. Infinite boredom reigns 
in many a luxurious home, and millionaires, wearied 
and sated with the narrow range of their amusements, 
turn with languid interest to any one who will invent a 
new toy. It may be a yacht, a race horse, or a new form 
of gambling. Anything is welcomed as a means of es¬ 
cape from the intolerable monotony of a listless life. 

In this connection it may not be amiss to refer briefly 
to a commotion, chiefly confined to the columns of the 
newspapers and the drawing-rooms of one or two ladies 
of Chicago, by a short speech which I made to the 
Chicago Woman’s Club. This club had done excel¬ 
lent work all through the winter in relieving distress 
among women and children. Its president, Dr. Sarah 
Hackett Stevenson, is one of the salt of the earth ; 
public-spirited, energetic and self-sacrificing, a capable 
leader, whether of men or women, in any good work to 
which she puts her hand. I was invited to attend the 
meeting summoned by the Woman’s Club, which I 
afterwards learned was composed largely of the women 
of the various relief committees in the city. I arrived 
late. Almost immediately after entering the room I was 
called upon to address the women present I refused, 
saying I preferred to wait, nor did I wish to speak unless 
there was some practical question upon which I could 
say a few words that might be a help. After two or three 
speeches had been made I was again called upon, and see¬ 
ing before me a great expanse of fashionable ladies, I 
spoke as the spirit moved me : simply, honestly and with¬ 
out the slightest intention of producing any effect beyond 
that of arousing the minds of some of those who were pre¬ 
sent who had no adequate realization of the situation to a 
sense of the need for exerting themselves. As my 


n6 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

remarks were ridiculously misrepresented I venture to 
reproduce them here. 

I am glad to have an opportunity of addressing you and to meet 
those who have been doing such good and active and self-sacrificing 
work in relieving the distress of their fellow citizens. At the same 
time I feel as if it were quite unnecessary for me to say anything to 
you, for those who are among the poor, working among them from 
day to day, know far better than I what they need and what should be 
done. But I think it may be useful for me to speak, because there are 
probably some sitting side by side with the active workers before me, 
and certainly many who are not here, but whom my words may reach 
through the press, who are among the most disreputable people in 
Chicago. Nothing is more obvious to any one who pays attention to 
the teachings of our Lord than the fact that the conventional judg¬ 
ment about the reputable and disreputable is foreign to the Christian 
ideal. Who are the most disreputable women in Chicago? They are 
those who have been dowered by society and Providence with all the 
gifts and all the opportunities ; who have wealth and who have 
leisure, who have ail the talents, and who live entirely self-indulgent 
lives, caring only for themselves, thinking only of the welfare of 
their brothers and sisters in the midst of whom they live. Those 
women who have great opportunities only to neglect them, and who have 
great means only to squander them upon themselves, are more disrepu¬ 
table in the eyes of God and man than the worst harlot on Fourth 
Avenue. 

Among the many sad aspects of the present distress, the saddest is 
the way in which it presses upon women. More than ever before at 
times like this do I feel able to join in the old Jewish prayer, in 
which, every Saturday, man thanks God that he was not born a woman. 
For man in the midst of his misery and destitution is not tormented 
by the temptation to regard his virtue as a realizable asset. That is 
the supreme misery of a woman. Therefore I am glad to think that 
you women are bestirring yourselves for women. If you go down 
into the depths and come face to face with the actual facts of human 
life you will find that at this moment in the city the economic diffi¬ 
culty confronts you at every turn. This very morning I received a 
letter from the widow of a soldier who fought in the wars, who is in 
debt and difficulties and in danger of being turned out into the streets, 
but who is offered a shameful alternative by her debtor. “What have 
I to do?” she asks. “ If I cannot raise $60, I must either give in or 
lose my home.” Only the previous day I met a poor girl who is 
willing and anxious to leave the life she was leading. Yet when it is 
proposed to remove her there at once was the difficulty of a debt of 
$64 which she owed. So it is all around the chapter If all of those 
present were to rouse themselves as many of them are doing, then this 
great trouble and affliction would be a blessing, a blessing by no means 
confined to those whom they would help, but a blessing which you stand 
in need of yourselves. For unless all the teaching of all the religions is 
false it is better for a man to lose his life and be miserable and poor 
and tormented than be comfortable and the possessorof all things and 
lose his own soul. None are in such danger of losing their souls as 


Who Are the Disreputables f 117 

those who are wrapped up in their own selfish comfort and who for¬ 
get the necessities of the brothers and sisters of the Lord. 

No reporters were present. I left the meeting to ful¬ 
fill another appointment immediately after I spoke. 
I went up afterwards at the close of the meeting and 
talked to some of those present, among them Dr. Steven¬ 
son and Madame Henrotin and others, nor did I gather 
from any one with whom I spoke that they misunder¬ 
stood what I said. Unfortunately, however, half a 
dozen ladies present felt hurt and one of them con¬ 
fided her indignation to a newspaper reporter. In¬ 
stantly it was evident to the sensationalists who man¬ 
ufacture scare heads for the Chicago papers that 
there was an admirable opportunity for working up a 
commotion. When Dr. Stevenson arrived home that 
night she found her servants in a state of alarm and the 
house surrounded by a band of reporters who were wait¬ 
ing to interview her, while the domestics feared the house 
was about to be attacked by burglars. Everyone who was 
present was cross-examined as to what I said, and as to 
what I didn’t say, and as a result it was telegraphed 
throughout the whole land and across the Atlantic that I 
had grossly insulted the ladies of Chicago by declaring 
that they were the most disreputable of their sex. Noth¬ 
ing could have been farther from my thought than insult¬ 
ing anyone. I simply stated a truism, and those who argue 
that I was mistaken in assuming that some mere fashion¬ 
able society ladies were present at the philanthropic meet¬ 
ing must be singularly unaware of the habits of the crea¬ 
ture in question. When slumming or philanthropy is the 
fashion she is always foremost in the swim. Anything for 
a new sensation. Anything for a fresh thrill to break the 
ennui of a blase existence. And I cannot regret that for 
once they should have received a somewhat stronger 
shock than they expected. There was so much discus¬ 
sion of the subject, and the phrase “ disreputable ” was 
so much discussed that I received an invitation to speak 
at the People’s Institute in order to set forth what I 


n8 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

meant so that even the most perverse might not misin¬ 
terpret my meaning. Here is an extract from my speech : 

There are worse people in the world even than the predatory rich. 
When a man is preying upon his fellow men he is at any rate doing 
something. It is better almost to be at work in sin than doing noth¬ 
ing at all. ‘ ‘ The idle rich ! ” I was reminded last night by a friend of 
Ruskin’s terrible phrase when he said: ‘'Every man belongs to one of 
two categories: he is either a laborer, that is a worker in some way, 
or he is an assassin.” Laborer or assassin! Carlyle said the same 
thing, although not so strongly, when he said “whenever you find a 
hand that is not busy working you will find a hand that is picking 
and stealing.” The idle rich! What has been the salvation of the 
people of Chicago in spite of all the City Councils ? It is this—that 
heretofore you have been extraordinarily fortunate in not having had the 
opportunity of breeding idle rich In consequence of war, conflagra¬ 
tion and panic your rich people have had all to work and hence they 
have not been such demoralized rascals as those who abound on our 
side of the water. But you are breeding them fast; and it is because 
they are still only in the germ, as it were, that there is hope, if you 
will turn your attention to it promptly, you may be able to prevent 
the multiplication of the species. It is difficult indeed to find language 
adequate to express the sense of shame, of disgust and humilia¬ 
tion with which we look upon those whom a bountiful providence 
and a kindly society has showered all the wealth of the world. They 
have all their hearts can desire and they use all these blessings merely 
in order to gild their own styes and to increase the quality and im¬ 
prove the flavor of the swill upon which they fatten. It is difficult to 
speak calmly of such people or to express the degree of confusion and 
sorrow and indignation which that class of self-indulgent women excite 
in the mind of any intelligent person. I have been denounced be¬ 
cause I said that the frivolous, self-indulgent women of fashion and 
woman of society was worse, infinitely worse, than many a harlot. 
It was a true word well spoken, and I am glad to know that it has 
reverberated throughout the world. 

I will ask you to take two typical cases. There is a poor girl come 
up from the country to this great city, and who is alone and friendless. 
She is good looking and gets a position as saleswoman or as a steno¬ 
grapher. Her health gives way and she is laid up. When she comes 
back her place is filled and she is out of a berth. She goes from 
place to place seeking work, and you who have never had to do so 
do not know how hard it is to seek for work day after day and find 
none. In the midst of her trouble, when she is nearly at her last 
cent, someone comes along. He likes her looks, and proposes to her 
with more or less preamble that she should go and live with him. 
That is the way they usually begin. She has no friends, she has no 
money, and the man at least seems kind and sympathetic, which is 
more than most of them are. She must live. She sees starvation 
before her. Her poverty, not her will, consents. She becomes his 
mistress. After a while he tells her to go and do as the others do. 
She is now down Fourth Avenue, loathing the life she leads and 
drowning her thoughts with drink and often wishing that when she lies 


Who Are the Disreputables f 119 

down to sleep she may never rise again. That is a common type. 
There is another type, a woman who is young and strong and healthy, 
pretty and lazy. She does not want to work if she can help it. She 
sees that if, in the bloom of youth, she makes a market of herself she 
can earn more money in a week than what she could earn in a month 
by hard work. She sells herself accordingly. She says, “I suppose 
my body belongs to myself, and I do not see why I cannot do what I 
like with my own ’* So she does what she likes and makes a living 
out of it. That is another type. Both types are confounded under 
the common cognomen of fallen women and prostitutes. There is all 
the difference between them that there is between the fixed stars. I 
have given you both in order that you may compare them to their 
counterparts among the idle rich. There is a woman, she is young, 
she belongs to the cream of the cream of your society, she has all the 
education which wealth can secure her, she has carriages to bear her to 
and fro so that she will never have to put her dainty foot to the pave¬ 
ment. She thinks of nothing except pleasing herself, and uses her 
wealth to minister to her vanity and her glory. She uses her carriages 
solely for her own gratification, and uses that priceless and peerless 
influence which a good and cultivated woman can exercise upon her 
acquaintances to increase the excitement and frivolity of society. She 
does what she likes with her own. She uses it all for herself, but, 
having some self-respect, she draws the line at her carcass which the 
other does not. Between the two what is the difference ? Each one 
uses what she has received to minister to her own gratification, her 
own vanity and her own excitement. Upon one society showers all its 
condemnation. Press, pulpit and women all unite in hurling the 
severest anathemas upon her who is often more sinned against than 
sinning, while they have nothing but adulation and praise for the pet 
of society who has never spent a single thought excepting upon her¬ 
self. That is bad. It is not our Lord’s way of judging. 

Unfortunately there is even worse than that. Some of your wealthy 
women do not even draw the line at their carcass. There is one thing 
which strikes us over in the old country with a certain amazement— 
how the women reared in this great republic, the daughters of your 
millionaires, who have been born with every blessing which American 
civilization can give them, instead of taking pride in their American 
citizenship are ready in their lust for vainglory and their mad desire 
to outstrip, if only by a hair-breadth, some rival, to sell themselves as 
much as any harlot on Fourth Avenue to the most miserable scion of 
European nobility. 

I remember dne of our dukes who bore an ancient name. He was 
divorced on the charge of cruelty and adultery. On one occasion 
when I was editing the Pall Mall Gazelle he wrote a letter for publi¬ 
cation in the paper, which discoursed upon the subject of bimetalism. 
I sent it back. I wrote him I did not wish to publish that letter or 
any other letters in that controversy now. But I told him I should 
not be frank if I did not tell him that the reason why I sent the letter 
back, however, was not because of its subject, but because of its author. 
“Rightly or wrongly,’’ I wrote, “you have the reputation of ruining 
women for your own pleasure, and therefore, in my opinion, you are 
infinitely worse than if you cut throats for hire ; therefore I return you 


120 


If Christ Came to Chicago. 

your manuscript.” Shortly afterwards he went to the United States 
and married an American woman of wealth. What do you think of 
your women if they allow themselves to be disposed of in this 
fashion ? In feudal times when an estate was made over to a pur¬ 
chaser the contract was not complete until at the same time the seller 
took a handful of dirt from the estate and gave it to the purchaser. 
Your American beauties and American heiresses are no more than that 
handful of dirt which marks and accompanies the transfer of their 
fortunes to our stone-broke nobles. 

You ask how can you help it? Well, at least, when one of them 
makes merchandise of herself, instead of filling your papers with 
eulogistic comments about her and her good fortune, you might speak 
the truth and say what you think. The idle rich have no moral sen¬ 
timent. Their one law is to please themselves, and they will not 
touch with their little finger this burden which weighs the masses 
down. But were the idle rich created for that? They have education, 
leisure and great opportunities for influence or usefulness. They have 
received much and therefore they should render much. If they are 
higher than their fellows, therefore they should make themselves 
lower in order to be their servants and to help them. Is that not true 
Christian teaching? Is that not what our Lord and Master would say 
to those people? 

In conclusion I would venture to appeal to those unfortunate sons 
and daughters of millionaires who are being brought up as idle gentle¬ 
men and idle ladies. They had better have been brought up saloon 
keepers. They had better have been brought up police constables a 
thousand times. But it is their misfortune that they have wealth and 
leisure without need to work and without stimulus to service. I 
would say to them, here in Chicago is the scene for your energies, here 
in Chicago where your fathers made their money, honestly or other¬ 
wise. In Chicago there are whole districts of your fellow citizens who 
have no conveniences of civilization, who have no opportunities of 
friendship. Why should your young men and women waste their 
lives and the divine enthusiasm of youth simply in their own gratifi¬ 
cation, and why should they give all these to wine and to women and 
to all the methods of fashionable debauchery when there are men and 
women and children at your very door whom you can help, and for 
not helping whom you will have to answer at the Day of Judgment ? 
I do not ask you to deliver tracts, or to pray at prayer-meetings, but I 
do ask you to love your brother man. Why, instead of wasting your 
time and your life in idleness, why not devote yourself to the service 
of some precinct in this city and go and live among them ? Do not 
act as high-toned, silk-stockinged gentlemen, but as a simple brother 
who is willing to go and live among men to help them to live a 
more human life than they are living now. You will then have 
many opportunities of usefulness and will be in brotherly union and 
living intercourse with hundreds of your fellow men, and then you 
will find that when you thought you had given up your position by 
going and living in the slums you have really found your soul and 
found your Lord. 

I said all tins at the People’s Institute. It was toler- 


121 


Who Are the Disreputables ? 

ably plain speaking, but so far from exciting any¬ 
thing of the hubbub occasioned by the much milder 
address to the ladies, one editor went out of his way to 
remark concerning the moderation I had displayed in 
the second discourse ! The commotion which the first 
speech occasioned was interesting if only as illustrating 
how much need there is for the gospel to be preached 
where heathendom in high places is masked by conven¬ 
tional homage to Christianity. 

The graver offenses which spring from idleness and 
wealth have not been specially alluded to in this chapter. 
They need not be dwelt upon. It is a painful subject, 
and every one can supply details for himself. Human 
nature is the same all the world over. Exempt man or 
woman from the necessity of daily labor, let no religious 
or humanitarian enthusiasm bind them over to the ser¬ 
vice of their fellows, and there can only be one result. 
That result is making itself manifest more and more 
in Chicago. There is work of every kind waiting to 
be done ; there are multitudes of more or less untaught, 
unkempt, uncivilized human beings to be brought into 
some kind of human relationship, to be guided, to be 
instructed, to be comforted. There are all the interests, 
sorrows and sufferings of the helpless poor lying unat¬ 
tended to while the idle rich are racking their 
brains in devising fresh means of excitement or new va¬ 
rieties of self-indulgence with which to pass away the 
time. It is not asked of them as it was asked of the 
young man in the gospel to sell all that they have and 
give to the poor, but they might at least give tithes of 
their time and of their substance to those who have re¬ 
ceived so little and who need so much. 













CHAPTER VI. 

the nineteenth precinct of the first ward. 

It is impossible to describe Chicago as a whole. It is a 
congeries of different nationalities, a compost of men and 
women of all manner of languages. It is a city of mil¬ 
lionaires and of paupers; a great camp of soldiers of 
industry, rallying round the standard of the merchant 
princes in the campaign against poverty. This vast and 
heterogeneous community, which has been collected to¬ 
gether from all quarters of the known world, knows only 
one common bond. Its members came here to make 
money. They are staying here to make money. The 
quest of the almighty dollar is their Holy Grail. From 
afar the name and the fame of Chicago have gone abroad 
to the poor and the distressed and the adventurous of all 
nations, and they have flocked and are still flocking to 
the place where a few men make millions and where all 
men can get food. 

A scientific study of the city as a whole would be the 
work of a life time, and when it was finished it would 
possess only a historical value. For, while the scientist 
was correcting his statistics and checking his analysis, 
the kaleidoscope would be changing, and by the time his 
exhaustive survey was ready for the press, a new genera¬ 
tion would have risen up which would not recognize the 
scenes which he portrayed. I cannot for a moment 
pretend to put the whole city, or even a single ward 
under the microscope. But I thought it might perhaps 
help us to appreciate the nature of some of the tougher 
problems that confront the reformer in Chicago if we 
paid a little attention to a single precinct in one of the 
thirty-four wards into which the city is divided. 

For the purpose of this survey I have selected the 


124 


If Christ Came to Chicago . 

nineteenth precinct of the First Ward, not because it is an 
average precinct, but because it presents in an aggravated 
form most of the evils which are palpably not in accord 
with the mind of Christ. If Christ came to Chicago, it 
is one of the last precincts into which we should 
care to take Him. And yet it is probably the first pre¬ 
cinct into which He would find His way. There are a 
good many of “ the least of these, My brethren,” in the 
nineteenth precinct. 

The nineteenth precinct of the First Ward consists of 
the blocks which lie between Harrison and Polk Streets. 
It includes both sides of Fourth Avenue, the west side 
of Dearborn and the east side of Clark. It is easy of 
access. The Dearborn Street horse car traverses it on one 
side, the Clark Street cable on the other, while Polk 
Street station empties its passengers into Fourth Avenue. 
It contains a fair share, but not more than a fair share, of 
foreign-born citizens. According to the analysis of the 
voting at the election of 1892-3, the number of American- 
born citizens was only just ahead of those who had taken 
their naturalization papers. The figures are interesting 
and bring into clear relief the cosmopolitan character of 
the population of Chicago. I print the figures for the 
city, for the First Ward and for the nineteenth precincts 


Origin. 

Citizens, 1893. 

Nineteenth 

Chicago. 

First Ward. 

Precinct. 

New England. 

. 7,522 

410 

12. 

Southern States. 

. 9,667 

1,079 

74 

New York. 

. 9 > 72 I 

822 

26 

Illinois. 

. 42,582 

682 

27 

Other States. 

. 41,570 

1,798 

64 

American. 

. I 3 E 335 

4,791 

203 

Canadian. 


143 

3 

German. 

. . 45.005 

477 

12 

Irish.. 


382 

4 

English. 


138 

2 

Scotch. 


61 

1 

Swedish. 

. 10,838 

44 

1 

Norwegian. 

. 4,832 

T 9 

2 

Danish. 

. 2,333 

20 

1 


















The Nineteenth Precinct of the First Ward. 125 


French. 643 29 5 

Bohemian . 5,721 5 

Polish. 4,865 44 1 

Austrian . 3,280 35 4 

Russian . 2,903 80 11 

Italian. 1,032 137 8 

Dutch. 1,600 20 

Miscellaneous. 1,933 2 o6 5 


128,812 1,740 60 

The advantage of this small precinct organization, 
which was necessitated by the adoption of the Australian 
ballot, is that it cuts the city up into manageable propor¬ 
tions. There are in the city of Chicago thirty-four 
wards which are cut up into 800 precincts. Each of 
these may be said to constitute a unit of organization 
with an independent political life of its own. 

It will be seen that so far as the nineteenth precinct 
is concerned that it is not a distinctively foreign precinct. 
The American-born citizen who barely holds his own in 
the city as a whole outnumbers the naturalized in the 
nineteenth precinct by more than three to one. It w T ould, 
however, be a mistake to regard the population as indig¬ 
enous to Chicago. More than one-third of the American- 
born citizens hail from the Southern States; that is to 
say, are men of color. Only twenty-seven were born in 
the state of Illinois. 

I11 politics the nineteenth precinct is very evenly di¬ 
vided. Chicago cast a majority of nearly 35,000 for 
Cleveland in 1892, but his majority in the nineteenth 
precinct was only ninety-eight votes against ninety-one 
cast for the Republican. In the election for Governor the 
Democrats held their own to a man, but three of the 
Republicans voted the Prohibition ticket and as they 
were reinforced by another stalwart Prohibitionist the 
Prohibition vote in the nineteenth precinct is four strong, 
which, as the total Prohibitionist vote cast in Chicago 
was only 3,116, was rather more than its fair proportion. 

At the mayoral election last December, the precinct 











126 


If Christ Came to Chicago. 

voted 85 for Hopkins (D), and 94 for Swift (R), while 
three voted for Britzius, the socialist. 

If woman suffrage were introduced we should be better 
able to form an idea as to the constituents of the popu¬ 
lation. The female contingent would be largely foreign 
and more remarkable for its variety than its morality. 

During the last year a great change has come over 
the population. The negroes have diminished and the 
Italians have increased. The large number of lodgers 
have to be taken into account in every election. They 
are registered and they vote. Where they come from no 
one knows; they are a floating, migratory population, 
but they are voted as any other residents of the ward. 

The amusements in the precinct are few. The Park 
Theatre, a most infamous place of resort, stands within 
a few blocks, but in the precinct itself, the chief amuse¬ 
ment is a little gambling, varied now and then by the ex¬ 
citement of seeing the inmates of an immoral house raided 
by the police, sometimes accompanied by their male part¬ 
ners. There is no public hall, no concert room in the pre¬ 
cinct, and, as everywhere in Chicago, the saloons are 
the great centers of social intercourse. 

This precinct, lying so close to the great arterial thor¬ 
oughfares of the south and west, offers a tempting 
field to those who wish to do good to their fellow men. 
Here in these three blocks are some two or three thou¬ 
sand human beings without any of the civilizing influ¬ 
ences which are usually supposed to be indispensible. 
There are, it is true, two doctors ; but there is no resi¬ 
dent clergyman, no minister of religion, no city mission¬ 
ary, nobody, in short, who has any moral, spiritual and 
educational oversight of the people. There is one Jewish 
synagogue, which is in an upstairs room in Clark Street, 
fronting a larger synagogue of another Jewish sect on 
the other side of the street. The Catholics also have a 
large German church just outside the precinct on the 
other side of Clark Street. This church stands open all 
day and every day. When I was present there were three 


127 


The Nineteenth Precinct of the First Ward. 

black-habited nuns engaged in their devotions. The 
contrast between the garish females on Fourth Avenue 
and the sober suited nuns in the church was very striking. 
Men were kneeling before the altar, candles were burning 
before the central figure and there were, in short, all the 
indications of devotion on the part of the scattered wor¬ 
shipers that one expects to find in a Catholic country in 
Europe. It is as an oasis set in the midst of all the vice 
and squalor and drunkenness of a district in which, 
despite all, are to be found miracles of human innocence, 
girls as pure as driven snow, young men leading holy 
and upright lives, uncontaminated by the vice and filth 
in the midst of which their lot is cast. That this is so is 
only another reason why there should be something more 
done by those who love their fellow men, to supply 
every such precinct with a center, a human center of help¬ 
ful friendship. 

Near the center of Clark Street, on the western bound¬ 
ary of Fourth Avenue, stands my old friend Hank North’s 
saloon, St. Lawrence House it is called, where at any 
time of the day Hank may be found dispensing free 
lunches to all and sundry. How he keeps it up is a 
marvel, but the free lunch goes on, hot soup with bread, 
apparently dispensed with equal freedom to those who 
take a drink and those who do not. There are several 
other saloons to the right and left, some of them very 
tough, but all supplying places in which the male deni¬ 
zens at least find a shelter and which are very generally 
used in the evening as a kind of general drawing-room 
or front parlor for those who have neither drawing¬ 
rooms nor front parlors of their own. Some of the sa¬ 
loons are equipped with billiard tables and other appli¬ 
ances for'recreation. During the extreme cold weather 
one or two of the saloon keepers in the precinct allowed 
the homeless out-of-work free shelter in the basements 
of their saloons. The place was warm and the men 
lay together in any place where they could be out of 
the cold. Along Clark Street most of the stores are de- 


130 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

shooting gallery in which the marksman can have 
three shots for a nickel. The only attempt to supply 
the intellectual needs of the district is made by two 
booksellers, one of whom was prosecuted some time ago 
for selling obscene literature, and whose windows still 
contain a large and varied collection of pornographic 
literature, together with an assortment of photographs 
of sitters whose chief characteristic is their absence of 
clothes. 

A large portion of the inhabitants consists of Jews. 
The Jones public school, which stands just outside 
the precinct on the east, is the school of the district. 
I spent a morning going over the establishment and 
was much interested and not a little saddened at many 
things which I saw there. The principal of the school 
told me that forty per cent of the scholars are Russian 
or Polish Jews; a very large number of the remainder are 
negroes. The genuine American was in an extremely 
small minority. The school is large and lofty and on the 
whole is a commodious building. But the playground is 
miserably inadequate. It was a sight to see the muster of 
the little ones in the dusty playground on a bitter January 
morning for a ten-minute recess. The younger boys 
huddled up in rows, standing close together as sheep in a 
flock, waiting motionless until they could return to the 
warm school-room. The larger boys played and romped 
as best they could. The little ones crowded together for 
fear of being knocked over by the larger ones, for there 
was not room enough for them all to play. In such a 
crowded district land is perhaps too valuable to be 
used for playgrounds, but it ought not to be impossible to 
improvise a playground in pure air out of the dust by 
simply strengthening the roof and placing a railing 
round the parapet. Anything would be better than the 
miserable apology for a playground which disgraces the 
school at the present moment. Something also might 
be done to utilize the schoolroom after school hours, 
as has been done in London and other English towns. 


The Nineteenth Precinct of the First Ward. 131 

But it ought not surely to be regarded as sufficient dis¬ 
charge of the obligations which thewealthy, leisured, 
cultured citizens owe to their fellow men that this 
service should be left to the hard-worked teachers and 
the more or less interested exertions of the political 
heelers. 

The nineteenth precinct of the First Ward is by no 
means the only or even an exceptional precinct When 
these pages are passing through the press Mr. F. W. 
Parker, of the Baptist City Mission, described before the 
Baptist Social Union a district which presents in a large 
scale the same evil features. Here is an extract from 
his paper: 

There is a section of the city from Stewart Avenue to the river and 
from Twenty-second to Thirty-ninth Streets with a population of 
60,000 people. From Twentieth to Fortieth Streets, along the lake 
front, is an equal area, with about the same population, rich and pros¬ 
perous. It has more than three miles of splendid boulevard palatial 
residences. The river region has no boulevards; it has no lake shore, 
but instead the stagnant Chicago River. Its death rate is two and one- 
fourth times higher, and deaths from zymotic diseases are fourteen 
times greater than in the lake region; it has ten deaths from diphtheria 
to one in the other districts, and the death rate of infants is six times 
greater. 

In the lake region there are seven hospitals. It has five asylums 
who help the unfortunate, while there is none in the river region. In 
the lake section there are six night schools to one in the other; ten 
kindergarten schools to one in the other; three business colleges to 
none in the other. The lake region has five sectarian schools, with 
700 scholars, while in the river region there are eleven great sectarian 
schools, with 6,000 scholars. The lake section has ten book stores to 
none in its neighboring section to the west; the public library has 
three stations there to none in the other. 

At the last city municipal election the lake region gave Mr. Swift 
6,600 votes, Mr. Hopkins 3,700. The river region gave Mr. Swift 2,900 
votes and Mr. Hopkins 6,900 votes. This illustrates a great difference 
between the two sections and the lack of political sympathy. 

There are three Catholic churches in the lake region and six in the 
other; twenty-two Protestant churches in the one section and but six 
struggling Protestant churches in the other. In the lake region is 
intelligence, wealth, comfort and all that makes life enjoyable; on 
the other hand is ignorance, want, misery and degradation. 

If Christ came to Chicago what would He do with the 
nineteenth precinct of the First Ward ? One thing is 
certain, He would not pass by 011 the other side like the 


132 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

High Priest or Levite. He would much rather regard 
it as the good Samaritan regarded the man who had 
fallen among thieves. Here is not one man, but some 
two thousand brothers and sisters of Christ, who are 
forced to live their lives here in the levee. Their life is 
squalid. Life is dreary in this precinct, yet life must be 
lived, the temptations of life resisted and the joys of 
life cultivated with such success as may be. But for 
these two thousand and odd human beings, even if we 
exclude the unfortunate women who are dedicated to 
what is called by bitter irony a life of pleasure, there are 
sufficient to afford a life’s work for anyone who endeav¬ 
ors to unite himself by helpful service to his fellow man. 

If any man or woman in Chicago to whom Provi¬ 
dence and society have given wealth and leisure, 
without at the same time destroying their generous 
aspirations after the improvement of the conditions of 
their fellow creatures, the nineteenth precinct of the 
First Ward and many another precinct in the city may 
be commended to them as affording an admirable field 
in which they can turn their benevolent desires to good 
result. The gulf between rich and poor which modern 
society seems to widen can only be bridged in one way, 
namely, by the personal sacrifice of individuals in per¬ 
sonal service to man and woman. The healthy consci¬ 
ousness of human brotherhood and of community of 
interest and sympathy is in danger of being forgotten 
when the well-to-do live in stately mansions on boule¬ 
vards and avenues and the poor are crowded together 
in more or less noisome districts such as this of the 
nineteenth precinct. 

If Christ came to Chicago, where would He be most 
likely to take up His abode—in the boulevards or in the 
slums, in the region of the lake or the region of the 
river? If so, where is it that those who love Him 
must seek and find their fate ? 

Believe it, ’tis the mass of men He loves ; 

And, where there is most sorrow and most want, 


The Nineteenth Precinct of the First Ward. 133 

Where the high heart of man is trodden down 
The most, ’tis not because He hides His face 
From them in wrath, as purblind teachers prate : 

Not so: the most is He, for there is He 
Most needed. Men who seek for Fate abroad 
Are not so near His heart as they who dare 
Frankly to face her when she faces them, 

On their own threshold, where their souls are strong. 




































PART II. — Christ's Metewand in Chicago 


, CHAPTER I. 

I WAS AN HUNGRED AND YE GAVE ME MEAT. 

If Christ came to Chicago, by what standard would He 
judge the city and the inhabitants thereof? That is a 
question which Lowell answers as we have seen. The 
measure which our Lord would apply would be the 
image which we have made of the least of these His 
brethren. That conception is in consonance with the 
general sentiment of the Christian Church in all ages. 
It is entirely in harmony with the humanitarian aspira¬ 
tions which may be regarded as the latest and most 
authentic outgrowth of Christian principle in our age and 
generation. At the same time it must not be forgotten 
that Christ has not left us entirely to the guide of rea¬ 
son or imagination as to the standard by which we 
are to be judged. When He had finished His teaching 
and had delivered to His friends and His disciples 
all that He had to say upon going up to Jerusalem 
to be delivered into the hands of His enemies and 
crucifixion, He summed up all that He had said, and 
brought His teaching to its natural and definite conclu¬ 
sion, in His description of the Day of the Last Judg¬ 
ment. This description is—after the Sermon on the 
Mount — the most famous and most solemn of all 
the teachings of our Lord. 

There is no greater surprise in the Bible than that 
which is occasioned when we come upon the simple narra¬ 
tive telling us that we shall not be judged by anything 
which we profess to believe or by any ceremonial 
or ritual to which we have conformed, or, still less, 


135 


136 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

by the fact of our membership or non-membership in 
any organized body, ecclesiastical or otherwise. The 
final decision as to our disposition, the definite appraise¬ 
ment of our character, will be made on grounds which 
many professing Christians would refuse to regard as 
being in any way distinctively religious. Christ’s test as 
supplied in the description as represented in the 25th 
chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel is throughout humanita¬ 
rian as opposed to theological, and unless there should be 
any mistake it is stated twice, once positively, the 
second time negatively, as if to preclude any possibility 
of mistake. 

The metewand of Christ on the Day of Judgment con¬ 
sists of the inquiry as to how far we have discharged the 
great secular acts of mercy in dealing with our fellow 
men. Those six acts are ranged in regular sequence ; 
they correspond to the simple elementary needs of mortal 
men. Christ at the last day will not ask what we have 
said or thought about Him, neither will He ask us 
whether or not we belong to His Church. His test, and 
so far as can be ascertained from His teaching, the 
only test which He will apply, is whether or not we have 
ministered to the physical, social and moral necessities 
of our fellow men. His words are so distinct and so 
precise that there is no getting away from them. Yet 
they have been ignored so much that salvation, which 
according to Christ was to be found in feeding the 
hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, 
showing hospitality to the stranger and visiting those 
who were sick or in prison, is now almost universally 
held to consist in the acceptance of a more or less 
abstract series of religio-philosophical propositions. I 
quote, therefore, the words of our Lord as the final 
authority on this point, if he came to Chicago. 

31. When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy 
angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: 

32. And before him shall be gathered all nations; and he shall sep¬ 
arate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from 
the goats; 


/ was an Hung red and Ye Gave Me Meat . 137 

33 . And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on 
the left. 

34. Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, 
ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from 
the foundation of the world : 

35. For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat : I was thirsty 
and ye gave me drink : I was a stranger, and ye took me in : 

36. Naked, and ye clothed me : I was sick, and ye visited me : I 
was in prison, and ye came unto me. 

37. Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw 
we thee an hungred, and fed thee ? or thirsty and gave thee drink ? 

38. When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in ? or naked, and 
clothed thee ? 

39. Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? 

40. And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily, I say 
unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these 
my brethren, ye have done it unto me. 

It is not unreasonable to believe that since our Lord de¬ 
clares that this is the standard which He will apply when 
He comes to judge the earth, that He would apply the 
same standard if He came to visit Chicago. It may 
not, therefore, be unprofitable to briefly cast a glance 
over the city in order to ascertain what has been done, 
what is being done, under each of the half dozen divi¬ 
sions into which the whole duty of man is mapped out. 

The first, most imperative want of man is food. The 
lack of it is the motive force which underlies revolu¬ 
tions. The dread of the want of it is the impelling 
force in almost all human labor. Men work not be¬ 
cause they love labor, but because they are hungered 
to it. Chicago may rightly claim to have done more 
than an ordinary share in ministering to the needs 
of mankind in this matter of food. Situated at 
the head of the great alluvial basin of the Middle 
States, she has contributed to cheapen the price of bread 
and meat in every capital of Europe. The half penny 
of the English laborer, the centime or copeck of the 
European, will purchase for him a larger piece of bread 
or a heavier portion of beef and pork than it would have 
done if Chicago and the immense agricultural region of 
which Chicago is the outlet had never existed. All 
this, of course, was done in the way of business. But it 


138 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

is not only the poor of other lands that Chicago has 
helped to feed. She has been for the last thirty years 
a hospitable host of the overflow of the poor of the Old 
World. We might well apply Lowell’s couplet originally 
written about the United States : 

Whose latch string was never drawn in 
Against the poorest child of Adam’s kin. 

Within her borders this day and every day, a million 
and a half of human beings, at least one half of whom 
were born beyond the sea, contrive in some fashion or 
another to get three meals a day with varying degrees of 
punctuality. 

Chicago has done all that in her devotion to what an 
American humorist describes as the chief end of man, 
namely ten per cent. But when we come to the feeding 
of the hungry under circumstances which preclude the 
making of a dividend out of the necessities of nature, 
the showing of Chicago is not quite so good. And the 
moral aspect of feeding the hungry, comes in only 
where the work is done for the sake of the least of 
these our brethren, and not from motives which would 
operate quite as strongly in securing a supply of fire¬ 
arms or fire-water. 

One of the first observations which occurs to a stran¬ 
ger who looks at the city from this standpoint is that 
while Chicago provides food wholesale, that is to say, 
wheat by the bushel, pork by the barrel and cattle by 
the ton, cheaper than any other place in the world, the 
retail price of these commodities when they are served 
up in portions suitable to the necessities of the poor is 
considerably in excess of that for which the same com¬ 
modities are to be had in the capitals of the Old World. 

The feeding of the hungry in Chicago was fortunately 
not accompanied by any scarcity of grain. Never in the 
history of the city were the elevators more crowded with 
food, and this winter has seen wheat sink to the lowest 
price that it has ever touched. With wheat selling at 
two cents per pound, it was strange indeed to see the 


I was an Hungred and Ye Gave Me Meat. 139 

streets of tlie city lined with men who were unable to 
obtain food. 

The suffering in the city was very great and would 
have been very much greater had it not been for the help 
given by the labor unions to their members and for an 
agency which, without pretending to be of much 
account from a charitable point of view, neverthe¬ 
less fed more hungry people this winter in Chicago than 
all the other agencies, religious, charitable and municipal, 
put together. I refer to the Free Lunch of the saloons. 
This institution, which is quite unknown in the Old 
World, is one of the features of the feeding of the 
hungry in Chicago which most amazes a stranger. 
There are from six to seven thousand saloons in 
Chicago. In one half of these a free lunch is provided 
every day in the week. And in many cases the free 
lunch is really a free lunch. That is to say, in many 
saloons, notably in my friend Hank North’s in Clark 
Street, scores of people were fed every day and are being 
fed at this moment without fee, or reward or any pay¬ 
ment for drink with which to wash down the more solid 
viands. In Hank North’s saloon throughout the winter 
he has given away on an average about thirty-six gal¬ 
lons of soup and seventy-two loaves of bread every day. 
In very many cases those who took advantage of this 
open-handed hospitality were too poor to pay a nickel 
for the glass of beer which in other cases passed as a 
matter of course. In this respect I think Hank North 
was better than his neighbors; but both Frenchmen and 
Englishmen who have had practical experience of the 
working of the system declare that even when the 
nickel for the beer is insisted upon they get better lunch 
and more food. That is to say, better than they get 
anywhere else in town with a nickel and without the 
beer. 

A very interesting article appeared in the Chicago 
Herald by a writer who has taken some pains in investi¬ 
gating the extent to which the free lunch system prevails 


140 


If Christ Came to Chicago. 

in Chicago, and he came to some very remarkable con¬ 
clusions which seem to me must be in excess of the facts. 
Calculating that three thousand saloons run free lunches, 
and that on the average at least twenty persons avail 
themselves of the free lunch at each saloon, the Herald 
calculates that 60,000 persons in Chicago were fed free 
every day by the saloon keepers. Even if we estimate the 
cost of the lunch as low as five cents this would repre¬ 
sent a contribution from the saloon keepers to the relief 
of the destitute in Chicago amounting to $18,000 a 
week.* 

Of course the enemies of the saloon will declare that 
this is a miserably inadequate attempt to remedy some 
of the incalculable evil that is wrought in the commu¬ 
nity. Without gainsaying that in the least, it is only 
just to remark that in the Old World, where we have 
the evils of the saloon, there is not even an attempt 
made to make such a compensation as that of the free 
lunch. 

After the labor unions and the saloon keepers the 
most important feeders of the hungry are the Cook 
County Commissioners, who are intrusted with the 
control of what in England we call the adminis¬ 
tration of the Poor Law. The Central Relief Asso¬ 
ciation occupies the third place in the work of 
coping with the distress this inclement winter. 

It is the misfortune of Chicago that, like many other 


*An attempt was made to abolish the free lunch in Chicago. In January a 
meeting of the Saloon Keepers’ Mutual Benefit and Protective Association of 
Illinois held a meeting at Aldine Hall, 75 Randolph Street, in order to secure the 
abolition of the free lunch on the ground that it was bad business and entailed a 
ruinous expense on the trade. The Chicago Times of January 20, in a somewhat 
jocose fashion, thus chronicles the rejection of the proposal. 

“ The free lunch has been saved from the destroying hand of reform. It is a 
matter of regret that the deliberations of the mutual liquor dealers have not been 
reduced to print. But it was in no sordid spirit of profit and loss that the free lunch 
was discussed by the mutual association of free lunch dispensers. The debate 
proceeded. It reached its climax in the following peroration, with which Mr. 
Johnson at length overthrew all opposition : 

“ ‘ I warrant you that the saloon keepers of Chicago with their free lunch have 
taken care of and fed more of the unemployed than all the relief societies put 
together. Well did Mr. Stead say that the saloons in one direction were doing 
more good than all the churches put together.’ ” 

“The name of Mr. Stead seems to have had a magical effect, for thereafter there 
was no more talk of abolishing free lunch. Who shall say now that Mr. Stead 
came to Chicago in vain ? ” 



4 i 


/ was an Hungred and Ye Gave Me Meat . 

towns, she had no board of associated charities, similar 
to those which have been organized in Cincinnati and 
other cities. The leading position among the charitable 
distributing societies was occupied by the Relief and 
Aid Association, which for some reason, whether on ac¬ 
count of its virtues or its failings, cannot be said to be in 
danger of the woe pronounced upon those of whom all 
men speak well. The Relief and Aid Society, I am 
afraid, bears a family resemblance to the Charity Or¬ 
ganization Society of London. Nothing can be more 
admirable than the principles upon which they are both 
founded, and few things can be less satisfactory than the 
way in which a good cause has been rendered distasteful 
by the pessimism of their secretaries. In London the sec¬ 
retary of the Charity Organization Society, Mr. Loch, a 
very able man, has an absolutely unequalled way of dis¬ 
suading people from doing anything. No matter what it is 
that is proposed to cope with the evils which afflict human¬ 
ity, Mr. Loch is certain to produce an elaborate reasoned 
brief setting forth all the dangers and all the difficulties 
with much lucidity, with the inevitable result that noth¬ 
ing is done. Mr. Trusdale, of the Relief and Aid Soci¬ 
ety, does not occupy so conspicuous a position as Mr. Loch, 
but he seems to resemble him in the lack of that sym¬ 
pathetic fiber which enables him to enlist the sympathies 
of the public. His society has done good service 
with its wood yard, but its attempt to provide lodg¬ 
ing for destitute wanderers was a miserable failure. 
Whether it was that they washed their inmates too 
much or used too much carbolic acid or generally en¬ 
forced too many rules and regulations, I do not know ; 
but as a matter of fact, the home which was maintained 
at considerable expense was a dead failure until Mr. 
Lamorris took it off their hands and ran it on a commer¬ 
cial basis, when it at once became a dividend-earning 
property. The temptation of the Relief and Aid Soci¬ 
ety, as of all other societies, is to apply a cut-and-dried 
standard to all cases, and to conclude that if the circum- 


140 


If Christ Came to Chicago . 

in Chicago, and he came to some very remarkable con¬ 
clusions which seem to me must be in excess of the facts. 
Calculating that three thousand saloons run free lunches, 
and that on the average at least twenty persons avail 
themselves of the free lunch at each saloon, the Herald 
calculates that 60,000 persons in Chicago were fed free 
every day by the saloon keepers. Even if we estimate the 
cost of the lunch as low as five cents this would repre¬ 
sent a contribution from the saloon keepers to the relief 
of the destitute in Chicago amounting to $18,000 a 
week.* 

Of course the enemies of the saloon will declare that 
this is a miserably inadequate attempt to remedy some 
of the incalculable evil that is wrought in the commu¬ 
nity. Without gainsaying that in the least, it is only 
just to remark that in the Old World, where we have 
the evils of the saloon, there is not even an attempt 
made to make such a compensation as that of the free 
lunch. 

After the labor unions and the saloon keepers the 
most important feeders of the hungry are the Cook 
County Commissioners, who are intrusted with the 
control of what in England we call the adminis¬ 
tration of the Poor Raw. The Central Relief Asso¬ 
ciation occupies the third place in the work of 
coping with the distress this inclement winter. 

It is the misfortune of Chicago that, like many other 

*An attempt was made to abolish the free lunch in Chicago. In January a 
meeting of the Saloon Keepers’ Mutual Benefit and Protective Association of 
Illinois held a meeting at Aldine Hall, 75 Randolph Street, in order to secure the 
abolition of the free lunch on the ground that it was bad business and entailed a 
ruinous expense on the trade. The Chicago Times of January 20, in a somewhat 
jocose fashion, thus chronicles the rejection of the proposal. 

“ The free lunch has been saved from the destroying hand of reform. It is a 
matter of regret that the deliberations of the mutual liquor dealers have not been 
reduced to print. But it was in no sordid spirit of profit and loss that the free lunch 
was discussed by the mutual association of free lunch dispensers. The debate 
proceeded. It reached its climax in the following peroration, with which Mr. 
Johnson at length overthrew all opposition : 

“ ‘ I warrant you that the saloon keepers of Chicago with their free lunch have 
taken care of and fed more of the unemployed than all the relief societies put 
together. Well did Mr. Stead say that the saloons in one direction were doing 
more good than all the churches put together.’ ” 

“The name of Mr. Stead seems to have had a magical effect, for thereafter there 
was no more talk of abolishing free lunch. Who shall say now that Mr. Stead 
came to Chicago in vain ? ” 



4 * 


/ was an Hungred and Ye Gave Me Meat. 

towns, she had no board of associated charities, similar 
to those which have been organized in Cincinnati and 
other cities. The leading position among the charitable 
distributing societies was occupied by the Relief and 
Aid Association, which for some reason, whether on ac¬ 
count of its virtues or its failings, cannot be said to be in 
danger of the woe pronounced upon those of whom all 
men speak well. The Relief and Aid Society, I am 
afraid, bears a family resemblance to the Charity Or¬ 
ganization Society of London. Nothing can be more 
admirable than the principles upon which they are both 
founded, and few things can be less satisfactory than the 
way in which a good cause has been rendered distasteful 
by the pessimism of their secretaries. In London the sec¬ 
retary of the Charity Organization Society, Mr. Loch, a 
very able man, has an absolutely unequalled way of dis¬ 
suading people from doing anything. No matter what it is 
that is proposed to cope with the evils which afflict human¬ 
ity, Mr. Loch is certain to produce an elaborate reasoned 
brief setting forth all the dangers and all the difficulties 
with much lucidity, with the inevitable result that noth¬ 
ing is done. Mr. Trusdale, of the Relief and Aid Soci¬ 
ety, does not occupy so conspicuous a position as Mr. Loch, 
but he seems to resemble him in the lack of that sym¬ 
pathetic fiber which enables him to enlist the sympathies 
of the public. His society has done good service 
with its wood yard, but its attempt to provide lodg¬ 
ing for destitute wanderers was a miserable failure. 
Whether it was that they washed their inmates too 
much or used too much carbolic acid or generally en¬ 
forced too many rules and regulations, I do not know ; 
but as a matter of fact, the home which was maintained 
at considerable expense was a dead failure until Mr. 
Lamorris took it off their hands and ran it on a commer¬ 
cial basis, when it at once became a dividend-earning 
property. The temptation of the Relief and Aid Soci¬ 
ety, as of all other societies, is to apply a cut-and-dried 
standard to all cases, and to conclude that if the circum- 


142 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

stances of the applicant do not fit their requirements, 
he is unworthy of relief. Had there been a more 
sympathetic spirit at the headquarters of the Relief 
and Aid Society, less red tape and more readiness 
to devise expedients for securing employment, the 
problem of distress last winter might have been coped 
with without the agitation. It is well that charitable socie¬ 
ties should be scientific, but they should not at the same 
time cease to be charitable. It is quite as important that 
they should have the confidence of the benevolent public 
as that their relief should be administered according to 
cast-iron principle and hide-bound political economy. 

Whatever the cause may be, when the distress came 
upon Chicago thus it was necessary to provide relief 
through other channels. The newly-formed Civic Federa¬ 
tion took the question into consideration at its first meet¬ 
ing even before it was duly constituted and summoned 
a conference of all the charities and public bodies in 
the city. Action was taken almost simultaneously by 
the Illinois Board of Charities and Correction and the 
City Council. Both, however, were abandoned in order 
to follow the lead of the Civic Federation. A Central 
Relief Association was founded in order to bring into 
line all the existing charitable agencies and to cope with 
the more pressing needs of the unemployed. An in¬ 
fluential central committee was formed and branch com¬ 
mittees were constituted dealing with all branches of 
charitable relief. A11 appeal was made to the public of 
Chicago and all wage workers were asked to give one 
day’s wages to the relief fund. 

Before long a street cleaning brigade some 3,000 
strong was formed which provided a labor test and 
utilized the surplus labor of the community for 
the welfare of the city. For the relief of the women 
sewing rooms were opened where more than a thou¬ 
sand willing workers were provided with means for 
maintaining themselves and their families. The prin¬ 
ciple on which both divisions of the relief work were 


T 43 


/ was an Hungred and Ye Gave Me Meat . 

founded was the same: let no willing worker starve, 
but if a man will not work neither shall he eat. 

The women’s branch of relief was under the man¬ 
agement of the Woman’s Club, Dr. Stevenson being the 
chief director of its operations. Their organiza¬ 
tion was more flexible than the department which 
looked after the men. The prejudice which pre¬ 
vailed in the minds of the chairman and the 
most active workers of the Central Relief Association 
against giving relief in money led to the issue of an 
inconvertible paper currency in the shape of ten-cent 
tickets which were only exchangeable for food and lodg¬ 
ing in certain specified stores. The Woman’s Club dis¬ 
carded the tickets and paid for the work cash down in 
the currency of the Republic. Whatever may be said in 
favor of the improvised inconvertible ticket currency, 
there is no doubt that if the question had been left to the 
decision of the workers who received it their vote would 
have been almost unanimous to be paid in money. The 
only advantage of the ticket is that it provides some 
check against its being used to purchase drink, as the 
saloon keepers were loath to take a currency which could 
only be redeemed on the day of issue. The other 
advantage claimed for it, namely, that at the depots of 
the association a ten-cent ticket would secure its owner 
more than he could buy for 15 or 20 cents in the open 
market, might have been overcome by the establishment 
of cost price stores which would limit their custom to 
those who were in relief work. 

In New York, for instance, the Industrial Christian 
Alliance raised $10,000 for the purpose of founding peo¬ 
ple’s restaurants, where a square meal could be had for 
five cents. At this institution a bowl of good soup, a 
bowl of coffee and three large slices of bread were sup¬ 
posed to answer the definition of a square meal. Tickets 
were issued at $5 the hundred, for distribution among 
the charitable. The cost of fitting up a restaurant with 
cooking apparatus, etc., was $1,500. The five cents 


144 


If Christ Came to Chicago. 

was estimated to pay the exact cost of the raw material. 

This is mere criticism of detail. Whether by one 
branch or another, a very great deal of arduous and vol¬ 
untary labor was performed by leading citizens. Dr. 
Stevenson occupies the first position among the women, 
while Mr. Harvey was the first among the men. 

Mr. T. W. Harvey, the founder of the town of Harvey, 
near Chicago, and well known for the leading part which 
he has taken in connection with Mr. Moody’s work in 
Chicago, is one of the best-known and most public-spirited 
citizens of Chicago. From the first he threw himself 
into the work of the Civic Federation with the same en¬ 
ergy which he displays in the management of his own 
business. Through the winter he subordinated the work 
of his office to the attempt to find work for other people. 
He was energetically seconded by Mr. W. R. Stirling 
and by Mr. C. H. S. Mixer, who had both devoted much 
attention to the subject and had rendered considerable 
service in connection with the Relief and Aid Society. 
Mr. W. R. Stirling has taken entire charge of the work 
in the 7th, 8th and 19th wards. 

The following notes of a conversation which I had 
with Mr. Harvey in the middle of February, give a fair 
survey of the work which was done under his direction. 

I found Mr. Harvey was suffering from a disagree¬ 
able neuralgic trouble brought on by excessive work. 
He was in excellent spirits and full of delight at the re¬ 
sults which had been achieved by the Central Relief As¬ 
sociation. Early in the day, when those who knew, or 
professed they knew, a great deal about the condition of 
Chicago were declaring that there were 100,000 men out 
of work, Mr. Harvey had assured me that the evil, 
although great, was by no means beyond the power of 
the city to cope with it. He had the satisfaction of refer- 
ing to his prediction and pointing to the results of the 
steps which had been taken to grapple with the pressing 
difficulty of the unemployed. 

‘ Yes,” said Mr. Harvey, “ It has been a labor of love. Laborious 


145 


I ivas an Hungred and Ye Gave Me Meat. 

no doubt, but with a rich reward in the consciousness that the necessary 
work has been well done — thanks to the hearty co-operation of every 
one and to the fact that these people who needed help were very good 
fellows and men whom it was a joy to help.” It was Sunday at lunch 
time. “I have just come in,” said he, ‘‘from being down on Water Street 
where we have a thousand of our boys keeping the place clean. We 
do not believe in Sunday work, but this was a Sabbath day’s labor. 
Water Street is full all the week and it is impossible to get it cleaned 
and the boys are only too glad to put in their time in doing this nec¬ 
essary work.” 

‘‘Tell me all about it, Mr. Harvey, for although we have read about 
it from time to time in the papers it is difficult to grasp the salient fea¬ 
tures of the scheme.” 

‘‘The salient features,” said Mr. Harvey, “ are very soon told. The 
Central Relief Association, which was formed, as you remember, as the 
first work of the Civic Federation, has grappled with the question in a 
business-like fashion. It has secured the confidence of the citizens 
and is now looking forward to the cessation of its more onerous 
duties with the consciousness that it has done what it was appointed 
to do; and, what is more remarkable, has done it to the satisfaction of 
those whose distress was the immediate cause of action. When the 
Relief Association was formed there were from two thousand to three 
thousand men sleeping in the police stations and the City Hall and the 
Pacific Garden Mission. Our first duty was to find sleeping places for 
all these men. This we did. Not by the wasteful and extravagant 
method of building or buying buildings of our own, but by taking ad¬ 
vantage of existing lodging house accommodation and entering into ar¬ 
rangements with the lodging house keepers for providingeach of these 
homeless men with a clean bed where he could lie down and be warm 
at night. It took some organization at first, but we had a great deal 
of assistance from Mr. Lammoris—a remarkable man is Mr. Lammoris. 
We succeeded in establishing arrangements with lodging house 
keepers in various parts of the city. Every homeless man was 
provided with a bed at the cost of ten cents, which he paid for 
by labor on the streets. No man was given relief without work¬ 
ing for it, unless, of course, the man was incapable, and then 
he was handed over to the County Commissioners to be dealt wiih 
along with other hopeless cases by the County authorities at Dunning 
and elsewhere. The work of the Relief Association properly under¬ 
stood is not to deal with hopeless paupers or incorrigible vagrants. 
It has to provide temporary employment to tide over a period of 
hardship. That is what we have done. We have had 4,500 persons 
upon our hands at work, which is a tolerably large family to look 
after and to provide for by an improvised committee. Of these about 
3,800 were employed on the streets; the remaining 700 were looked after 
under the Women’s Committee, under Dr. Sarah Hackett Stevenson, 
which has done excellent work in looking after the women. We have 
found reluctance to go to work among a very small proportion of 
the out-of-works, even although the rate of payment was only ten 
cents an hour. Our difficulty has not been to find men to work ; it has 
rather been in limiting them to the number of hours which we deem 
wise. The Relief Association never set itself to enter into compe. 


146 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

tition with the labor market as an employer of labor. Its aim was to 
pay the minimum upon which an able-bodied man could live. We pro¬ 
vided work on the public streets which would procure him that irre¬ 
ducible minium of subsistence. We calculated that if a man took a 
pick or a shovel or a broom and went out to clean streets for three 
hours he would earn thirty cents, which would be paid him not in 
money but in tickets. We divided the tickets into three portions ; one 
he gave for his breakfast in the morning before he started work, the 
second for his supper and the third went for his bed. We arranged it 
so that both breakfast and supper were considerably better than he 
could get elsewhere for 15 cents although they did not cost us more 
than ten. By this means the tickets, although nominally they had the 
face value of 30 cents, were worth 40 cents, and indeed if you take into 
consideration the advantageous arrangements made with lodging 
house keepers it might fairly be said that our 30 cent ticket was worth 
between 45 and 50 cents. This advantage comes out much more 
clearly, however, in the arrangements which were made for the mar¬ 
ried men. We had only about ten per cent of married men among 
our street workers. They were put on the long gang. That is to say 
they were allowed to work double shifts and sometimes eight or nine 
hours. A man who had earned 90 cents by doing nine hours’ work in 
the street was able to get provisions at our store which could not be 
bought in the market for twice that money or nearly twice. This we 
could not do as a general thing but it was done in the emergency.” 

“ But can you explain to me how it worked ? ” 

‘‘It is very simple,” said Mr. Harvey, “and it is the most interest¬ 
ing part of the whole organization. You see we received a great 
many gifts of flour and food. These we sent down to our depots. 
We were also able to buy wholesale in the cheapest market, and in 
many cases when we made known what we wanted the goods for we 
were supplied, notably with boots for the mere cost of leather and 
the labor requisite to make the boots. The result was that we elimi¬ 
nated the profit of the middle man. We bought everything whole¬ 
sale, and so we were able to supply our out-of-works with a pair of 
boots for ninety cents, which they could not have bought elsewhere 
for $2.50. So it was with coal and flour and everything else which 
they needed. We were, as you may say, the head of a great family 
with four thousand children, and by acting in that capacity and car¬ 
ing for them we were able to make a small sum of money go twice as 
far as would otherwise have been the case. ’ ’ 

“Speaking about money, Mr. Harvey, how much do you think 
will carry you through?” 

“We have raised $90,000 up to the present moment. We shall re¬ 
quire another $100,000 to carry us through the next two months. I 
think that $200,000 will enable us to cope with all the floating distress 
which the association can regard as properly belonging to its province.” 

“Do you think you will get this money ? ” 

“Certainly, we have no doubt of it. We have been very much 
pleased with the alacrity with which the wage earners and the lower 
middle classes have responded to our appeal. Sixty-five per cent of 
the money at present in hand has come from that class. The response 
has been very general and most gratifying.” 


/ was an Hungred and Ye Gave Me Meat. 147 

“That is very good for the poor people,” I said, 'but it does not 
speak so well for the rich.” 

“Oh,” said Mr. Harvey, “we shall get the money from the rich 
now. We could have got it already if we had wanted it; that is to 
say, we could have gone round and asked a number of men who are 
perfectly willing to supply all the money we need, but it is better that 
the whole of this movement of relief should be popular and should be 
from the people to the people. The result so far has fully justified 
our plan of operations.” 

"How far have you found the people whom you relieved 
strangers? ” 

‘ ‘ Seventy-five per cent of the persons who have applied to us for 
relief, and who are now on our books, have lived five years and more 
in Chicago. Many of them were born here. The popular accusation 
that we have been feeding a host of tramps from the outside is a de¬ 
lusion. The average, I tell you is, seventy-five per cent of residents 
in Chicago for more than five years. It is exactly the other way. In¬ 
stead of bringing people to Chicago from the outside, we have sent 
away a great many persons who were lingering in our midst. They 
were very glad to get home and get a chance of regaining their old 
neighborhood, and who could not go because they had not the means, 
or they had been so broken down and dirty and ragged that they could 
not very well face their home folks. I should say there were four¬ 
teen hundred at least of persons whom we have given employment 
to, and have washed them and got them clean clothing, and they have 
been sent to the places where they belonged. There are more going 
home. We are getting to know the people better and to know ex¬ 
actly what they can do and what kind of character they have got, and 
we shall be able to find them places as soon as the winter passes. It 
is astonishing what you can do with men when you get into personal 
relation with them and establish confidence in them. It has been a 
great pleasure to me to go down morning after morning and see them 
parade before they go out to work. They breakfast from six o’clock 
to eight o’clock, and I go down to see that everything is going 
straight. If the coffee is weak they are very quick to make complaint, 
and on oneoccasion at least that complaint was very well founded. The 
supplier of coffee had substituted a fifteen cent for a seventeen cent 
coffee, and the men detected it at once. Our breakfast is a substantial 
meal; it is big enough to leave something over for a man to put into his 
pocket and make his lunch of, so that he could keep going until sup¬ 
per time. I have not been so pleased with working men for a long 
time. They are hearty and friendly, and there are very few kickers 
among them. If a man growls or tries to do anything mean the rest of 
the fellows round set upon him and hiss him. And why? Because they 
know we have really their interest at heart. They know also that we 
have not got so very much money to come and go upon, and that we 
are doing the best we can with what we have. We are really endeav¬ 
oring to carry out with our street brigade of three thousand men 
something like the socialists’ ideal on a small scale—that is to say 
we are endeavoring to give each man according to his needs. For in¬ 
stance, we parade the men and notice their shoes. Those that are 
in a very dilapidated condition we form into what we call New Boots 


148 If Christ Came to Chicago . 

Brigade. They get an extra shift of work so that they can earn 
their boots. That is to say, instead of working only three hours they 
are put on the long shift and they will work six or nine. The average 
last week of hours worked by our men was five hours. So 
it is with laundry and with clothes, in fact with everything that a man 
needs. Then we look out for their health. We have doctors at all 
our stations, and they look at a man’s physical condition. If he seems 
to be very much run down they give him more work, or a chance of 
doing more work. For we are not slave-drivers in our gangs, and if 
he cannot work from temporary indisposition he is put under treat¬ 
ment. We have had as many as two hundred men in the bad weather 
who had colds and other ailments. We had them laid up and attended 
to, and in a short time they got better. We have been very fortunate 
about small pox. There have been some cases, which were sent to the 
hospital, but we have been very fortunate in having singularly few 
deaths.” 

“Do you think,” I asked, “that it would have been as well to have 
made the tickets into five cents as well as ten cents ? Ten-cent cur¬ 
rency is rather inconvenient.” 

“ Yes,” said Mr. Harvey, “we are going to do so to-morrow. We 
are issuing five cents because the men have to use a ten-cent ticket 
for a shave or for a bath or for whatever they may need even although 
it only costs a nickel. Now we are issuing nickel tickets and these 
will be good for the bath or for the barber. As for tobacco, of which 
some people have talked, that is not necessary; we have plenty of 
tobacco at the store. We are beginning this next week a more close 
and rigorous system of classification, so that we may know exactly 
the trade and the record of the men whom we are employing. A 
very great number of them are farmers’ boys. We expect when the 
weather opens to get a thousand of them back on the land and that 
will be a very good thing.” 

“ How have you got on with the labor unions ? ” 

“Very well. At first they declared they would fight and protested 
against the ten cents an hour for labor, but they soon came to see 
that it was the best that could be done. I had one or two deputations 
from disgruntled kickers who came to demand that we should pay 
twenty cents an hour and employ everybody who was out of work. 
I asked them how many there were who were out of work. They 
said they thought there were about 40,000 who would willingly work 
upon the streets or anywhere else at twenty cents an hour. A very 
little calculation enabled me to show them that if we started on that 
scale we should be out of funds in a week. The labor unions, how¬ 
ever, repudiated those gentlemen, and on the whole we have no 
reason whatever to complain of the way in which the unionists of 
Chicago have treated us. They have been looking after their own 
men very well. We have relieved some unionists; we never make 
any difference between unionists and non-unionists, but speaking 
broadly, the unionists have helped the city very much by carrying 
their own people who are out of work. 

“ What about the churches ? ” 

“The Catholics, for instance, have looked after their own poor, 
through the societies of St. Vincent de Paul and the Visitation and 


149 


/ ivas an Hungred and Ye Gave Me Meat. 

Aid Society. Father Cashman and Father McLaughlin have both 
been very active, and all their subordinates and assistants have been 
specially active during this emergency in looking after the interests 
and welfare of the Catholics. 

Some of our agencies claim that in the St. Vincent de Paul Societies 
each parish takes care of its own, without giving help to other soci¬ 
eties that may be less favored with means. I don’t know how true 
this is; but I should suppose that the richer parishes would assist 
those that were less able to care for themselves. At any rate I have 
no criticism for the work done by the Catholic denominations, as they 
certainly give much time, thought and money to the care of their own 
poor. Of course they are not able to care for all their wants, but the 
Chicago Relief and Aid Society and County and the Central Relief 
Association at this time supplement their efforts.” 

“ What about the Jews ? ” 

“ The Jews,” said Mr. Harvey, “ as a rule have supported their own 
poor without assistance from us, but their funds have run rather low 
and Rabbi Hirsch is getting out a special appeal for funds.” 

“ What about the other churches ? ” 

“The other churches have done very well, but we have not suc¬ 
ceeded in creating the general system of house to house visitation 
such as was at one time talked of. There are districts in the city 
where certain churches in one neighborhood are combined together 
and have undertaken a very thorough, systematic visitation of the dis¬ 
trict and have communicated to us daily all that they do, so as to 
avoid overlapping. But these are the exceptions. There is one dis¬ 
trict which is very well worked, and that is what we call the Hull 
House district in the seventh, eighteenth and nineteenth wards. 
This is extremely important because it contains many who are most in 
need of help. Ninety per cent of the Jews being helped are in that 
district; seventy-five per cent of the Bohemians and fifty per cent 
of the Italians are also located there. It is a matter of very 
great importance that they should be carefully visited, as they have 
been. We hope to have a very interesting and useful report of the 
Hull House visiting, where Mr. Waldo has charge of the registration. 
Miss Addams, of course, while she was in town was the center of this 
work.* The district which was best organized, outside Hull House 
district, is that of which the Rev. Mr. Inglis is the center. He hassev- 

*The following particulars concerningthe Hull House district will be of interest: 

In the Wards, Seventh, Eighth and Nineteenth, there are 887 men at work who 
are receiving 10 cents per hour for three full days in the week. This money all 
goes to families who are entirely dependent upon this work for their support. 
Each family has been visited and revisited to ascertain as to their needs and con¬ 
dition. Here are some interesting figures. 

Of these men 684 are supporting 647 women, 1,597 children ; total, 2,908 persons. 
Average time in Chicago, 7.9 vears ; average number of months out of work, 5 1-5. 
Total debts, 117,226.10; total rent overdue, $5, 546.30 5 pawn tickets in their posses¬ 
sion, 205. Total number of cases of sickness, 104 ; number of individuals needing 
clothing and shoes, 526 ; number of families needing coal, 351. 

A summary of 134 other cases in these same wards who have been especially 
long residents of Chicago and of whom only eighteen were disapproved as un¬ 
worthy shows 134 men supporting 129 women and 382 children ; total persons, 645 ; 
average time in Chicago, twenty years ; average time out of work, 6.3 months; 
total debts, $4,126.25 : total amount of rentoverdue, $1,496.50; pawn checks in their 

J possession, 30; number of cases of individuals needing clothing and shoes, 130; 
amilies needing coal, 63. 



150 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

eral ministers associated with him and they do very good work. Most 
of the churches have one visitor and some of them have two and these 
are visiting and doing what they can, although there is a lack of 
organization.” 

“ How did you succeed in regard to the County Commissioners? ” 

“There again there is work which we foresee will be better done 
next winter. We have been in friendly relations with them but we 
have not been able to secure from them the lists of the people whom 
they relieve. They are politicians and amateurs at the work of relief. 
The way in which they distributed at first created a public scandal. 
We have had people crowding upon each other in the streets. We 
have succeeded in impressing upon them the duty of having a waiting 
room where the people can wait, but we have not yet succeeded in 
opening their eyes to the fact that it would be well to provide them 
with chairs. Psychologically the chair is indispensable. If you meet 
an applicant for relief who has been standing for an hour before he 
comes into your presence, you have a man who is nervous and irri¬ 
table, and he takes much more of your time than he would if he had 
been sitting for two hours on a chair in the waiting room. They have 
dealt, I should say, with about 8,000 families. They have not confined 
themselves to paupers, which is their proper function. They have re¬ 
lieved people more or less indiscriminately. Next winter I hope we 
shall be able to establish a more intelligent system of division of labor. 
The Chicago Relief and Aid Society, the old Chicago society, has done 
good work. That is to say, they will have distributed some 190,000 before 
the winter is over. They make allowances to families. They have the 
whole town mapped out and they know very well where the need is 
greatest. I had a curious illustration of the ignorance which prevails 
in certain well-informed quarters, as to the operations of the Chicago 
Relief and Aid Society. I asked a minister who was doing good work 
in a district on the West Side, whether the Chicago Relief and Aid 
Society was relieving any people in that district. He said he did not 
think they were. I asked him if he would be willing to relieve the 
Chicago Relief and Aid Society of all responsibility for cases in that 
district. He thought he would. In one week I asked the Relief and 
Aid Society’s agent to draw me up a list of all the persons who were 
receiving relief from that society in that district. When the list was 
prepared I found that it contained no less than 1500 names. When 
I handed that to the minister he was simply knocked out, and ad¬ 
mitted that it was no use, he could not undertake to do the work 
which the Chicago Relief and Aid Society was doing so unostenta¬ 
tiously and so efficiently that the ministers in the district were not 
aware of its benefactions. Mr. Mixer, who is Vice-President of the 
Relief Association and a leading member of the Relief and Aid So¬ 
ciety, has been a valuable lieutenant through the whole of this work. 
He was a retired business man and having leisure he devoted it, with¬ 
out reserve, to the service of the poor. He has come to our office 
every day, six days a week, and has stuck to his work as he formerly 
stuck to his business. There are others who have done good work. Dr. 
Stevenson I have already mentioned in connection with the Woman’s 
Club. We could not get all to work in cast-iron methods at first, and Mr. 
Sterling, who during the first weeks of the winter did very energetic 


/ was an Hungred and Ye Gave Me Meat. 151 

service, was disposed to lament our inability to make things move 
according to rule and routine. We soon got them into shape and the 
work has gone very harmoniously and satisfactorily and I am par¬ 
ticularly pleased at the hearty good feeling which exists among those 
whom we have relieved. We have got these men to understand that 
we are doing the best for them that we can, and they are cheerful and 
I never had to do with a body of men who made so few complaints.” 

The Society of St. Vincent de Paul, to whose work Mr. 
Harvey pays a tribute of well-earned respect, draws its 
resources almost entirely from Catholic subscribers. The 
Catholics, who number 40 per cent of the population of 
Chicago, include in their number more than 50 per cent 
of the extremely poor, while more than half the wealth 
of the town is in the hands of non-Catholics. Under 
these circumstances charitable relief by voluntary sub¬ 
scription falls heavily on those least able to bear it. 
Father Cashman, a public-spirited and enterprising 
priest, started a trampery in the parish of St. Jarlath 
which was a great success. He provided accommoda¬ 
tion for the hungry and homeless, and succeeded in find¬ 
ing places for many of them. The good work done by 
isolated ministers and priests has never been adequately 
appreciated in Chicago. Were I to attempt to set it 
forth here I would have to convert this chapter into a 
catalogue or directory. Even then it would exceed the 
space at my disposal. 

The work which Dr. Stevenson and the Woman’s Club 
undertook was extremely interesting, dealing as it did 
more with the domestic life of the people. For every¬ 
thing that touches the woman touches the home. Mrs. 
Abbott was placed in charge of a department of imme¬ 
diate relief, with instructions to act in emergencies such 
as the prevention of evictions, the salvation of furniture 
from foreclosure and mortgage and all the other contin¬ 
gencies which suddenly threaten the destruction of the 
home. Various methods of relief were adopted; first of 
all was the employment bureau, where every attempt 
was made to obtain work, whether in the city or in the 
country, for those who were willing or anxious to work. 
Then rooms were opened for needle-work, for plain sew- 


152 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

mg, knitting and lace-making. The women as a rule 
worked seven or eight hours a day and received warm 
lunch at Hull House. They were paid fifty cents a day. 
In every way the club sought to tide over the distress of 
the winter. There was, of course, a certain proportion 
of reckless incompetents who gravitate to the bottom 
naturally, not having it in them to hold their own in the 
struggle for existence, but there was no skulking and 
very little fraud. Many were married women with fam¬ 
ilies, but there was a good proportion of young women, 
several from the factories and some from offices. 

Another women’s organization which did good work 
was the Catholic Women’s National League, which es¬ 
tablished soup kitchens in various centers and distributed 
coal and bread to those in the immediate neighborhood. 

Among the many institutions which have been started 
during the past three months for the relief of the unem¬ 
ployed, that of the Brotherhood of St. Andrew is perhaps 
doing the most practical work. The office of this soci¬ 
ety is at 37 Michigan Street and is in charge of D. P. 
Welsh, who for a number of years has been connected 
with missions and charitable institutions. Mr. Welsh ac¬ 
cepts all able-bodied men who come to him for work, and 
if they have no employment to which he can imme¬ 
diately be sent, they are taken in and cared for until some¬ 
thing can be found for them to do. The bureau has the 
capacity of taking care of 140 men, all of whom are 
given three meals a day and a bed on which to sleep, in 
return for which they are expected to do a certain 
amount of work such as splitting wood, addressing en¬ 
velopes and various other jobs. The home, at 37 Mich¬ 
igan Street, is fitted np with sleeping accommodations, 
bathing facilities and, in addition, Mr. Welsh has intro¬ 
duced a system by which all the clothing of the appli¬ 
cants who are cared for is thoroughly fumigated so as 
to prevent the chance of any infectious disease being 
spread. The bureau is entirely undenominational and 
is supported by voluntary contributions. 


/ was an Hungred and Ye Gave Me Meat. 153 

Looking at the work of relief as a whole, it may 
be said that there was a well-meant attempt to cover 
the whole ground, that a central association was formed 
on sound principles with active and energetic men 
at its head, and that in two or three instances sec¬ 
tions of the town were taken thoroughly in hand. But 
although the work was well begun, it is only beginning. 
The whole of the summer might be spent in elaborating 
a system of co-ordination and co-operation, which is in¬ 
dispensable to any effort to put the community in a state 
of siege against exceptional distress. Returns have 
been made from some of the churches, but they have 
been fragmentary, and the most sanguine would be the 
first to declare that the effort to systematically district 
the whole of the city under the direction of the Central 
Office, directed by the chief of staff of the army of 
relief, has by no means been realized. A good deal will 
have been done if by next winter the Central Relief 
Committee is in a position to issue a map of Chicago, 
showing the 190 square miles of the city mapped out 
into districts for visitation and relief. These districts 
should so far as possible be co-extensive with the wards 
into which the city is divided for electoral purposes. 
Within each ward the churches should be associated as 
far as possible in the work of visitation. If this were 
done, and an efficient visiting committee established in 
each ward, then should any fresh wave of distress over¬ 
take Chicago, the citizens would feel that they were ade¬ 
quately equipped to cope with any misfortune which 
may overtake the community. 

A good deal however will have to be done in the way 
of active propagandism before the trustees of some of 
the wealthier churches realize that they owe a duty to 
the poor in their immediate neighborhood, which is not 
compounded for even by the erection of gorgeous 
ecclesiastical edifices or by the faultless performance of 
snatches of sacred opera by trained choirs on Sundays. 


CHAPTER II. 

THE SHEEP AND THE GOATS. 

Next to the relief of the hungry, by supplying of a cer¬ 
tain modicum of solid food in order to maintain life, the 
second great want of our nature is something to drink. 
“ I was thirsty and ye gave me not drink ” is the second 
indictment which Christ says will be brought against us 
at the East Judgment. Under the burning Asian sun 
the giving of a cup of cold water is a charity the nature 
of which is better appreciated than in the colder latitude 
of Chicago. In primitive semi-tropical lands the digging 
of a well has ever been regarded as one of the most mer¬ 
itorious of human acts; and in modern cities there is a wide 
field left for similar acts of beneficence, although, of 
course, their forms are varied. 

The supply of water to the inhabitants of Chicago is 
one of the few monopolies of service which are in the 
hands of the municipality. The bounty of nature 
places an illimitable supply of pure water within two or 
three miles of the lake shore and the supply of that 
necessity of life is no longer left to the tender mercies of 
the individual citizen. But as man does not live by 
bread alone neither does he quench his thirst simply by 
pure water. When they drink water in Chicago it is 
usually iced and many people quench their thirst by 
beverages in which water is only one of the many in¬ 
gredients. In America as in England the sanctified gen¬ 
ius of temperance zeal has not been able to devise 
any drink that compares in popularity with beer. 
Therefore the saloon, after the municipality, holds the 
first place in the supply of drink to the thirsty. 

According to the law of the State of Illinois the sale 
of drink is absolutely prohibited one day in seven. This 


155 


156 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

is qualified by a municipal ordinance in Chicago which 
permits the saloons to be open on Sunday provided they 
keep their blinds down and admit people by the back 
door. This ordinance is largely disregarded and almost 
all the saloons in Chicago are run wide open all Sunday. 

I11 the question of prohibition after twelve o’clock, 
there is no municipal ordinance to break the force of the 
law of Illinois. On the contrary, the municipal ordi¬ 
nances strengthen the law. Merely for the purpose of 
testing how far prohibition prohibits, I employed an 
agent to make a personal investigation one evening in 
a district in the First Ward. The following extract from 
an affidavit sworn before Mr. Justice Lyon, on December 
14, 1893, gives the result of this investigation: 

My field of examination was a territory bounded east and west by 
State Street and the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific tracks, and 
north and south by Van Buren and Twelfth Streets. The tour of in¬ 
vestigation was made on Wednesday, Dec. 13, 1893, between the hours 
of 12.30 and 5 a. m., during which time I visited fifty-six saloons. 
These were chosen indiscriminately, as it was impossible to go to 
everyone in the district I have specified. Out of the total number of 
saloons visited I found only four of them closed. In the case of the 
other fifty-two, entrance was gained in thirty-seven places by the 
front door, and in thirteen cases by the side door. At the remaining 
two saloons both the front and side doors were fastened, but they were 
immediately opened on my knocking. In all but seven of the places 
visited I found men drinking, while in a number of them women were 
also to be seen. In none of the saloons visited by me were the slight¬ 
est attempts being made to keep secret the fact that the sale of liquor 
was going on, while in two cases I saw police officers drinking in the 
saloon. The only difference to show that it was after the midnight 
hour being the fact that in most cases the window blinds were drawn 
down. The gas in each place, however, was brightly burning. 

The more zealous teetotalers of Chicago by way of 
compounding for their own inactivity in this direc¬ 
tion turn to damning the saloon keeper. He gives 
drink to the thirsty, as a matter of business of course, 
but as they disapprove of the quality of his beverage, 
they curse him up hill and down dale, through all the 
moods and tenses, but they do not raise a finger to 
minister themselves to the thirst of the community. 
Let me make here one exception. 


157 


The Sheep and the Goats. 

The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union has sup¬ 
plied the corridor of the City Hall with drinking foun¬ 
tains, which are so much used they occasionally run dry. 
That is good and deserves to be recorded to their credit, 
but like “ a good deed in a naughty world,” it stands 
out all the more conspicuously because it is unique. I 
shall discuss elsewhere the question of the saloon; but 
there is no doubt that, so far as ministering to the needs 
of the human mechanism for the wherewithal to quench 
its thirst, the saloon has done a great deal more than the 
churches. Even in the distribution of non-intoxicating 
beverages the saloon keeper does more than the churches 
or any institutions run by the churches. At the same 
time, if the saloon keepers are wise in their day and gen¬ 
eration, they will follow the example of the English pub¬ 
lican and supply soft drinks more widely than they do at 
present. Bovril or beef extract, coffee, tea, cocoa, as 
well as lighter beverages which are at present chiefly 
supplied by the drug store, are not supplied in the saloons 
to the same extent that they are elsewhere ; and failing 
any effort on the part of the religious and temperance 
people to minister to the thirst of the community by 
non-intoxicants, the saloon keeper might well be ap¬ 
pealed to for help. 

“ I was a stranger and ye took Me not in,” the third 
head in the condemnation, recalls a virtue which has 
almost gone out of fashion in the civilized countries of 
the West. You need to go to Russia or still farther 
east to find what a high place hospitality holds among 
the distinctively Christian virtues. There are at the 
present moment millions of men and women who are 
wandering about the Russian Empire homeless, and in 
one sense of the word destitute, and yet they are at 
home wherever they can find a peasant with a roof over 
his head. These are the pilgrims to the sacred shrines, 
and the poorest peasant in all Russia would feel that he 
had denied his Eord if he did not extend to the pilgrim 
whatever accommodation his humble home possessed. 


158 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

In Germany, by co-operation between private charity 
and the public authorities, labor farms have been estab¬ 
lished at intervals along the high-roads where a man 
can earn his board and lodging and go forth on his 
journey to whatever place he may be bound. In 
England the organization is not so complete, but casual 
wards in every Poor Law district are established, where 
in return for the stipulated stint of labor the tramp, or 
the working man on tramp in search of work, finds 
accommodation. 

In America not even these municipal makeshifts for 
primitive hospitality have been provided. The re¬ 
sult is that the tramp nuisance is becoming one of the 
most formidable of the lesser evils which afflict the 
Republic. The papers all this winter have been full 
of reports all pointing to the gradual evolution of the 
laborer in search of work into the mendicant tramp, 
and the still further evolution of the mendicant tramp 
into a species of banditti. In certain counties in Ohio, 
for instance, last winter, the tramps were little better 
than highway robbers traveling from place to place on 
freight trains. They alighted whenever they were hungry 
and made a foray into the neighboring villages or 
isolated farm houses, compelling the farmers to give 
them meals and then turn over whatever money might 
be in the house. 

In another town, in Indiana, the Mayor provided every 
night watchman with a stout black snake whip and in¬ 
structed them to use it with vigor upon all tramps. 
Every now and then the papers published telegrams de¬ 
scribing how freight trains were boarded and their food 
and coal supply confiscated by the wandering wastrels 
of civilization. 

In Iowa the tramps, forming into bands of six or 
twenty, made a practice of breaking into the most com¬ 
fortable school house in the district and converting it 
into an improvised lodging house. There was usually 
coal enough in the coal house to keep the stove going 


59 


The Sheep and the Goats. i 

until the morning, when they resumed their march. As 
it was in Iowa, Ohio and Indiana, so it was to an even 
more alarming extent in Texas and California. In 
Texas they were reported to have formed camps at 
stated points, where they rendezvoused and divided the 
spoils which they had either begged or stolen. The 
most formidable development was that which was re¬ 
ported from California in the month of December, for it 
marks a stage in the evolution of the tramp into semi¬ 
military bands. The reporter telegraphed: 

The army of unemployed is moving eastward from the Pacific in 
regular military fashion. Three hundred and fifty such men arrived 
in Colton, Cal., a week ago, en route to New Orleans, camped outside 
the city limits, ran up an American flag on a pole, and sent a delega¬ 
tion into town to ask for rations. The men were of good appearance, 
clean and orderly, and evidently were not tramps. The parties of un¬ 
employed are organized into companies, with captains and regular 
roll call. The officers serve two meals a day, all sharing alike when 
there is anything to share. The citizens of Colton gave this particu¬ 
lar party ioo pounds of bacon, piles of bread, and several sacks of 
potatoes, beans and other provisions. The men wanted food to last 
them across the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico. 

While the tramp was developing in this direction the 
most notable utterance on the other side came from 
Governor jewelling, of Kansas, who had himself been 
a tramp in Chicago nearly thirty years ago. His letter 
to the police boards of Kansas created no small sensa¬ 
tion throughout the Western States by he pointing out 
the fact that the right to go freely from one place to 
another in search of work was part of the personal lib¬ 
erty guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States 
to every human being. Even voluntary idleness was 
not a luxury forbidden to American citizens. The habit 
of fining tramps for being vagrants and compelling 
them to work out those fines as municipal slaves on rock 
piles was a flagrant violation of the Constitution. This 
institution he declared was a relic of the slave auction- 
block era. He declared that to be homeless and poor 
should no longer be considered a crime in the cities of 
Kansas. The method of entertaining strangers by con¬ 
verting them temporarily into slaves conflicted equally 


160 If 'Christ Came to Chicago . 

with his reading of the American Constitution and of 
the New Testament. When he was questioned as to 
why he issued the circular he made the following 
remarkable reply: 

I know what it is myself to tramp the streets of a city seeking 
work and attempting in some way to earn an honest living. In 1865 
I tramped up and down the streets of Chicago trying to get work. I 
was hungry, penniless, and was subject to arrest, but I was not a 
criminal and ought I to have been placed upon the rock pile simply 
because I was unable to get work when I was willing and anxious to 
do anything that would enable me to earn an honest living? I don’t 
call these people without employment tramps, and no one should use 
such a name in connection with them. There is a large number of 
people out of employment. John J. Ingalls says there are 3,000,000. 
and Kansas has its share of them. The economic conditions of the 
present are the trouble, and men are compelled to wander around in 
search of work, not from choice, but from necessity. 

The question as to what ought to be done with the 
tramp is a burning one in many American cities, but it is 
still as far from solution as ever. A circular issued to 
thirty-five Chiefs of Police showed that the opinion of 
the police authorities is almost equally divided as to 
whether or not public provision should be made for their 
accommodation. Sixteen thought it would be advanta¬ 
geous, while eighteen were of the opposite opinion. 
Twenty at present furnish lodgings without any con¬ 
ditions as to cleanliness or work. 

The professional tramp proper, in the United States, 
is estimated at under 50,000, but this year this regular 
army has been swollen by a great influx of willing 
workers who are more or less undergoing a process of 
degeneration which urgently calls for the attention of 
the social reformer. 

I have already described what is done for the stranger 
in Chicago without a penny, but the duty of showing 
hospitality by no means depends upon the impecuniosity 
of the stranger. As a municipality Chicago has not yet 
deemed it wise or necessary to intrust its Mayor with 
the discharge of civic hospitality, which is undertaken 
as a matter of course by the Burgomeister or the Mayor 
in the Old World. Such hospitality is only provided by 


The Sheep and the Goats. 161 

a special vote of the City Council or is left to the 
sporadic action of individual citizens. 

This, however, is a matter of comparatively small im¬ 
portance. What is much more serious is the absence in 
Chicago of any arrangement for providing clean, decent, 
habitable lodgings for the poor man. According to the 
best authorities, the floating population is about 30,000 
single men, who are living at this present moment in 
lodging houses which are too often foul, verminous and 
full of every element which should not be included 
in the hospitality extended to the stranger. This 
army of 30,000 pays nightly for its lodgings, but owing 
to the scandalous inadequacy of the municipal regula- 
lation of the city and the absence of the philanthropic 
enterprise, they are too often lodged like pigs and treated 
worse than cattle. The ten-cent doss house is by no 
means an ideal lodging house. 

A description of one of these places will give an idea 
of what the poor and homeless men of this city have to 
endure. Within a stone’s throw of one of Chicago’s best 
private hotels can be found one of these lodging houses. It 
is a small, one-storied frame structure. Its sleeping ac¬ 
commodation consists of one hundred and fifty beds (?) 
which occupy the ground floor and the basement. Upon 
entering the front door one is almost overcome by the odor, 
which more resembles that of a long disused tomb than 
that of a human dwelling place. Pushing open the door 
the “office and parlor” is entered. Here in a room 
twenty-five by thirty feet were to be seen, a short time 
ago, crowded round a stove, twenty-seven men, whose 
clothing was more conspicuous by its variety and filthi¬ 
ness than by its adequateness. In one corner of the 
room was a desk at which sat a good specimen of the 
“genus tuff.” This individual hailed the investigator 
as he hesitated at the door, with the question : “ Say, 
dere, you, does you want a bed ? if you don’t, git! We 
want no loafers here.” Stepping to the desk the visitor 
asked the price of a night’s lodging, and after being told 


162 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

deposited a dime. Saying that he would like to retire, 
a doorway at the farther end of the room was pointed out, 
and he was told in a far from civil tone to take his 
choice of any of the beds. Following the direction 
pointed out, the investigator entered the sleeping room. 
For a few moments it was impossible to see anything in 
the place, the only light coming from a dirty lamp at 
the farther end of the room, which was about fifty by 
twenty-five feet in dimensions; while the darkness was 
made more apparent by the smoke from a dozen pipes 
of the men who were lying in the beds and smoking. 
The arrangement of the room was certainly unique in 
character. The beds consisted of a piece of canvas, 
which was fastened to the wall on one side, while on the 
other they were supported by upright wooden poles, 
which ran from the floor to the ceiling. They were ar¬ 
ranged in tiers, four deep, and the covering on each bed 
consisted simply in one thin blanket, which in several 
cases was reeking with vermin. In the center of the 
room was a large stove filled with blazing wood which 
only served to dispel any breath of air which might by 
inadvertence have entered the apartment. In this place 
one hundred and fifty men sleep, no precaution being 
taken whatever to prevent the spread of any disease 
which may be brought in by any of the lodgers. 

Nothing has been attempted in Chicago corresponding 
to the municipal lodging houses of London or the sim¬ 
ilar institutions which have long been successfully 
worked at Glasgow. It has been left to a private individual 
Mr. Lammoris, to do what can be done to provide clean 
and comfortable lodging accommodations for lodgers. Mr. 
Lammoris knows the lodging houses of Europe, and he 
has managed several large establishments in the city with 
great success. He is now preparing to put up a huge 
place, a veritable poor man’s hotel, twelve stories high, 
with 1,200 rooms, and each room provided with an out¬ 
side window. When that building is completed, Mr. 
Lammoris’ hotel will form a precinct in itself in the ward 


The Sheep and the Goats. 163 

organization of Chicago. Mr. Taminoris makes it pay 
and pay well. But even although there are dollars in it, 
yet this expert, who of all men in Chicago is best qual¬ 
ified to speak on the subject, has publicly declared the 
need which there is for the licensing, regulating and in¬ 
spection of lodging houses. But as there is no boodle 
in it for the Aldermen, they will do nothing. Mr. 
Ivammoris, speaking at a dinner which he gave on 
Thanksgiving Day to 750 guests, said : 

I have tried for three years to get the City Council to take action 
for the inspection and regulation of hotels of this class. We have in 
the east end of the Eighteenth Ward twenty-seven lodging houses. 
We have from twenty-seven to 700 lodgers in each one, or an average 
of 250 in each one, or a total of 6,950 men. We have in this whole 
city only eight hotels that are run ou the same or nearly the same 
principle as mine, yet we have on the South Side and on the West 
Side sixty-seven hotels that are run in every condition of disease 
and crime. I have known of men to reach the city with $3 or $4 in 
their pockets and through inability to find wholesome places within 
their means have gone to these filthy and dirty lodging houses to 
stay. After remaining a week or even less than a week they become 
filthy and dirty and get in with men that have no self-respect, and 
in less than a month they become criminals. 

These are Mr. Lammoris’ words, not mine. Judged 
on the evidence of this witness, the city of Chicago will 
cut but a poor figure if the third of the divine tests is to 
be literally applied. Her hospitality to the stranger is 
to convert him by rapid stages through dirt to crime. 

One special feature of the housing of the penniless 
stranger, was the action taken by a certain number of 
churches, which, scandalized by the lodging of the home¬ 
less in the police stations and the City Hall, threw open 
their buildings as temporary lodging houses until better 
arrangements could be made for providing for them.* 

This work was started by the Central North Chicago 
Ministerial Association, and was one of the outcomes of 
revival services held by the evangelist, Mr. Mills. 
Father Cashman also was not behind in this work of 

*Those who took the lead in the matter were the following: Belden Avenue Bap¬ 
tist, Belden Avenue Presbyterian, Lake View Congregational, Grace English Luth¬ 
eran, Wesley Methodist, Church of the Covenant, Fullerton Avenue Presbyterian, 
Christ Chapel and Union Park Congregational. 



164 If Christ Came to Chicago 

charity, and slung hammocks in the auditorium and 
lecture room of the old St. Jarlath’s church, and supplied 
his guests with soup and sacred music. 

The fourth article of condemnation, “ naked and ye 
clothed Me not” is a text which does not fall very 
heavily on Chicago. Whether it is the severity of the 
climate that kills out those who have not sufficient to 
wear, or some other cause, I do not know; but the peo¬ 
ple you meet in the streets seem usually to be warmly 
clad. Even the little urchins who, at much too tender 
years, are allowed to vend newspapers in the streets, are 
comfortably rigged up. Of organized agencies for the 
clothing of the destitute there are not many apart from 
the charitable societies and the churches. The proprie¬ 
tors of a business establishment, however, gave away 
$200 worth of clothing for the Salvation Army last 
winter, and several other instances of like kind are re¬ 
ported. 

The most systematic attempt to clothe the naked has 
been made by the admirable School Children’s Aid 
Society, which has distributed about $10,000 worth of 
clothes to children who otherwise would have had to re¬ 
main away from school owing to the lack of apparel. 
About 800 children a month were clothed by this 
society, the funds for which were largely provided for 
by a Thanksgiving appeal. Most of the contributions 
were supplied by the children who were better off. For 
every dollar that the parents have given, the children 
have given five. A distributing room where both new 
and second-hand clothing was received was opened at 
159 W. Monroe Street. The only criticism to offer upon 
the School Children’s Aid Society is that, much as has 
been done, as the distributors know only too well, the 
work was very inadequately performed. While some 
were clothed, many more went without; there were 
many of these little ones who could not be warmly clad, 
because there were not enough clothes to go round. 

Another point that may be noted in connection with 


The Sheep and the Goats . 165 

this “ naked and ye clothed Me not,” although it is not 
absolutely in accord with the scriptural interpretation of 
the words: clothing is a protection against cold, and 
there is great need in Chicago for something like those 
public warming places which have been established in 
Paris, where those who have no active work to keep 
them busy and who have to hang about the streets until 
night time can find shelter within reasonable range of a 
stove or radiator from the very cold wind which blows 
on the shores of Lake Michigan. Such institutions 
have been vehemently demanded for some time past 
in London, where the question seems likely to be 
solved by the unemployed taking possession of the read¬ 
ing rooms of the free libraries. They form part of the 
public, they can read or pretend to do so, and it is diffi¬ 
cult for the custodian to discriminate between men who 
use the library simply for a warming place and those 
who are there for study. There are not many free in¬ 
stitutions in America which could be utilized in that 
way. The fact that the evil has not obtained unman¬ 
ageable proportions, is due to the much abused saloon. 
The saloon keeper is practically the only man who sup¬ 
plies free warmth to the chilled and shivering wanderers 
on the street. In this as in other things, it is one 
of the gravest questions which confront Chicago how 
long the saloon keeper is to be allowed a practical 
monopoly of ministering to the wants of mankind. 

The care of the sick in a large city involves much 
more than at first sight appears. There is, for instance, 
the organization of first help to the injured, in which 
Chicago lags far behind other cities. Miss Ada C. 
Sweet, to whose energy and intellectual enthusiasm the 
city owes so much, has spent much time and trouble in 
endeavoring to bring about an improvement in this 
direction, with but partial success. In reply to my 
request for information as to how the matter stands now, 
Miss Sweet writes: 

An Ambulance Association is contemplated, but at present there is 


166 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

nothing of the kind in Chicago. The Police Department has laid 
upon it the picking up of persons who fall sick in public places, or 
who are maimed, injured and dying. It has no trained men for this 
service, nor surgeons, nor nurses to go with its heavy patrol wagons on 
their missions of mercy, or even on its four ambulances. The entire 
city owns not more than six ambulances, two being used almost en¬ 
tirely for contagious diseases and cases by the Health Department. 

Hundreds of men die annually in Chicago of injuries, when intelli¬ 
gent, timely aid might easily have saved them. The hospitals have 
no arrangements for responding to emergency calls ; the whole matter 
of picking up and transporting to the hospitals persons injured or the 
victims of accident, is left entirely to the untrained, ignorant police¬ 
men on the patrol wagons and the three or four ambulances stationed 
about the city. Patients have to be carried miles over the rough 
pavements, generally in heavy, stiff-springed wagons; their lives are 
often jolted out or they bleed to death on the way to the County 
Hospital, where most accident cases are taken. 

It is no uncommon occurrence for an injured man to die unattended 
in a police station. This happened to a man who had been struck by 
a train of cars in Chicago while these pages were going through the 
press. 

The fifth head, “sick and ye visited Me not,” recalls 
attention to the fact that here also the specialization and 
concentration necessitated by the condition of life in a 
great city have deprived many Christians of one of the 
means of grace which the Christian Church in all ages 
has urged with great stress. Instead of having the sick at 
their own doors, where Lady Vere de Vere or her Chicago 
prototype can visit her humble neighbors and cheer the 
dying couch by the grace of her presence, the sick poor lie 
many blocks and sometimes many miles away. They are 
cooped up in huge hospitals or carried off miles into the 
country and housed far away from all possibility of con¬ 
stant civilizing contact with the healthy members of the 
community. The accommodation of the sick is supplied 
on a more or less inadequate scale by various hospitals, 
the largest of which is supported by the county, while 
the others are of a more or less denominational charac¬ 
ter. A mere cursory survey, however, of the provision 
of the sick in Chicago, reveals an astonishing lack in the 
shape of convalescent homes. There are no institutions 
provided in which convalescents can recover or in which 
the incurable can be placed to die. Homes for the dy- 


The Sheep and the Goats. 167 

ing should be regarded as an indispensable necessity in 
every great city. Even supposing that here and there 
efforts have been made to provide for convalescents, it is 
broadly true that the accommodation for patients who 
have recovered sufficiently to leave the hospital is lament¬ 
ably inadequate. 

To visit the sick is no longer regarded as part 
of the indispensable duty of the Christian man or 
woman. It is considered sufficient to pay taxes or to 
subscribe to hospitals and to maintain district visitors or 
to support religious orders devoted to the task as part 
of the professional duty. The Nurses’ Visiting Associa¬ 
tion and many other associations do noble work, but they 
would be much better if they were supplemented by more 
voluntary efforts, not merely for the sake of the sick so 
much as for the sake of the healthy who need to be 
brought into closer intercourse with their suffering 
neighbors. If each of us were to be asked when last we 
voluntarily visited a sick person we should most of us 
make a very poor showing. No one who has ever 
been an inmate in a hospital or poor-house and has lain 
silent, watching the long hours pass, can doubt that of all 
the charities which cost little in cash and are worth much 
in love and in service there are few which rank so high 
as that of the visitation of the sick. Yet what steps have 
been taken, or are being taken, by any of the churches 
in Chicago to secure a plan, let us say, whereby each 
church should take its proper share of responsibility for 
providing sympathetic visitors of the non-professional or¬ 
der who would take charge of their due proportion of in¬ 
mates in the County Hospital or of the old and infirm in 
the poor-house at Dunning ? In a village or country town 
where these sick persons would be lying within a stone’s 
throw of their neighbors’ doors such visitation would be 
regarded as a natural and necessary duty only to be 
avoided by those who had no longer the love of Christ 
in their heart. How is it that the obligation should di¬ 
minish as the need for its discharge grows greater ? That 


i68 


If Christ Came to Chicago. 

is a question which will have to be answered before our 
lives can hope to escape condemnation by the metewand 
of Christ. 

The last division into which the duty of man is divided, 
that of going unto those who are in prison, is a duty 
which in the nature of things cannot be discharged by 
every individual in the whole community, especially if 
by prisoner is meant the ordinary convict prisoner. But 
even there much might be done by the contact of the civil¬ 
izing influence of non-criminal kind upon caged-up con¬ 
victs who are expiating their offenses in the Bridewell 
or at Joliet. 

The condition of things in the Bridewell, for instance, 
where for years past juvenile offenders were crowded to¬ 
gether in cells, the comparatively innocent with the 
incipient tough of the slums of Chicago, without any in¬ 
dustrial training, was an infamy which ought to have 
roused the churches to action. But it did not, and it 
was not until Mr. Pomeroy publicly denounced the con¬ 
dition of things upon the platform of the Central Music 
Hall that help was given to Mr. Superintendent Craw¬ 
ford to enable him to carry out an object for which he 
had pleaded in vain for so long. All state institutions 
breed abuses as carcasses breed maggots, and the only way 
to remedy this and to minimize the evil is to perpetually 
keep every detail of the working of such institutions un¬ 
der the searchlight of the loving eye of Christ. But 
where is there among the churches of Chicago any recog¬ 
nition of their responsibility to the criminals in Joliet 
or the offenders in the Bridewell ? 

But it would be a mistake to limit the phrase, “ I was 
imprisoned and ye came unto Me,” to the convict pris¬ 
oner. In the time of Christ the prison included a great 
many others than those who at present find themselves 
in the Bridewell and the penitentiary. All men under 
restraint may be said to be in prison: the inmates of 
lunatic asylums, those who are detained by the compul¬ 
sion of circumstances in the poor-house, all prisoners 


The Sheep and the Goats. 169 

of extreme poverty, who are reduced to a position of vir¬ 
tual slavery, and all those who are deprived of the right 
of leisure which distinguish the free man from the slave. 
In all these denizens of the prison houses of modern soci¬ 
ety we have to recognize the suffering Christ of our time. 
They are the least of these His brethren, and as we do it 
unto them, so we do it unto Him. There is a phrase that 
He used in relation to those who are in prison which has 
a curious significance. ‘ ‘I was in prison and ye came unto 
Me.” To come to a person is to draw near to him, to 
be close to him, to be neighbor to him. Then there 
can be no great gulf fixed between him and us. But 
have we come unto Him? May it not be if we came 
unto Him, especially those of us who are weary and 
heavy laden with sins and troubles of our own; if we 
came unto Him as He lies scourged and manacled in 
the prison houses of our time, we should find the promise 
true: “Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy 
laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon 
you and learn of Me ; for I am meek and lowly of 
heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls.” 












* 


















\ 


\ 


























PART III — Satan's Invisible World Displayed. 


CHAPTER I. 

THE BOODEERS AND THE BOODLED. 

There is a story told of one of the early Caliphs 
which may well be recalled in this connection. When 
he succeeded to the dominion of the Mussulman world, 
he was asked by one of his friends, “Give me some 
money out of the public treasury.” The Caliph looked 
at his friend in amazement and said, “What do you 
mean? You want some money out of the public treas¬ 
ury?” “Yes,” replied his friend. “I have been your 
friend and would like some reward.” The Caliph an¬ 
swered, “ Come to me at sundown and I will help you 
to some money.” Plis friend went away feeling that he 
had done well and that the Caliph had not forgotten 
that “to the victors belong the spoils.” He came 
around that night punctually and found the Caliph 
in disguise awaiting him. He was provided with a pick¬ 
axe, a dark lantern and a spade. His friend was sur¬ 
prised and said, “ I thought you were going to give me 
some money.” “ I said I would help you to get it,” 
said the Caliph, “ but you must also help me.” So they 
crept through the by-streets until they came to the house 
of one of the wealthiest men in the city. “ Now,” said 
the Caliph, “ Stop! I know where this man keeps his 
treasure chest. It is just on the other side of this wall, 
and if we only work steadily we shall be able to make a 
hole through the wall and you will be able to help 
yourself to the money.” The man looked at the 
Caliph aghast and said : “ Do you take me for a thief?” 

“ Why,” he replied, “ I thought you said you wanted 



172 


If Christ Came to Chicago. 

some money.” “But,” said his friend, “it was public 
money I wanted.” “ Then,” said the Caliph, “ when you 
and I stand before the judgment seat of Allah, whether 
do you think it will be easier, for us to listen to the re¬ 
proaches of one man whom we have robbed or to those 
of all the millions of the Faithful, whose money you 
propose to take ? ” 

This saying of the Moslem Caliph, with his archaic 
ideas of the responsibility of man to his Maker, not merely 
for his dealings with the individual, but still more for 
his dealings with the community, was far in advance of 
the morality of the City Hall of Chicago. It is perhaps 
too much to say that Chicago is and has been governed 
upon a system of corruption, but whoever did make that 
statement would not have much difficulty in making out 
a very strong prima facie case in support of his assertion. 
The sovereign people may govern Chicago in theory: as 
a matter of fact King Boodle is monarch of all he sur¬ 
veys. His domination is practically undisputed, and the 
recognition of its existence is the basis of the limitations 
which are placed upon the taxing powers of the City 
Council. It being expected as a fundamental principle 
that the Aldermen will steal, the longer-headed, well-to- 
do citizens, acting under the guidance of Mr. Medill, the 
editor and proprietor of The Tribune , then Mayor of 
Chicago, limited the taxing powers of the city of 
Chicago to two per cent of the assessed value of realty 
and personalty of the city. In order to limit still 
further the amount of money liable to be stolen by the 
representatives of the people, they elaborated the most 
extraordinary system of assessment that ever bewildered 
a financier or shocked a moralist. All this was not done 
to any desire 011 the part of the reputable citizens to 
place their city in leading-strings, but simply because 
they knew by experience that the rule of King Boodle 
would be supreme, and the members of the Council, 
whether Republican or Democrat, could equally be relied 
upon to act as his venal courtiers. 


The Boodlers and the Boodled . 173 

As a result of these expedients, which so severely 
limited the financial resources of the city, the Aldermen 
were driven to forage for plunder in other fields. 
Unfortunately they were only too numerous and the 
pastures to be obtained lay in tempting profusion on 
every side. The powers of the city, although strictly 
limited in the levying of taxes, are almost unlimited in 
relation to the common property of the city. The 
streets, for instance, have furnished an estate of incalcul¬ 
able value, which could be sold wholesale or retail to 
the highest bidder. This estate was much greater 
than might appear at first sight. For, as it is said of 
freehold property, the owner possesses not only the sur¬ 
face of the ground, but all that lies between it and the 
stars on on the one hand, and the molten core of the 
earth on the other. No one who proposes to cross the 
street in the air, either by an elevated railway or with 
telegraph or telephone wires or electric light wires, or any 
one who proposes to construct a balcony or bay-window 
overshadowing the roadway, is trespassing on the city’s 
property. The surface of the streets of course affords 
an almost inexhaustible field for revenue. There is the 
right to lay down the street railways, and to permit rail¬ 
way corporations to cross the street or to run down a 
street, together with the right to make side tracks and 
connections with wharves and warehouses communicating 
with the streets,* to say nothing of the right to cumber 
the sidewalk with merchandise or advertising matter. 
All of these things of course belong to the city by right 
of its ownership in the streets. Below the surface 
it is the same thing. No conduit can be made for 
electric light wires, for gas or water pipes, for pneumatic 
tubes, to say nothing of tunnels for underground rail¬ 
ways or subways, without infringing the right of the 
city in its streets. 

* The permit for a switch track or the vacation of a strip of alley sometimes 
means more than a year’s salary. There is said to be a recognized schedule of 


prices. 

Switch track to a coal-yard..$i,ooo 

Switch track to a brewery.f2,500 





174 


If Christ Came to Chicago . 

In the year 1892 the number of miles of streets 
was reported at over 2,000 miles. These streets 
are a portion of the civic domain, but only a 
portion. There are besides great portions of the city 
which belong to the Board of Education. These are 
what are called the school sections, which are set 
apart for educational purposes. In the whole of 
Chicago, the area of which is 180 square miles, there 
were originally eleven square miles held in trust for 
the purpose of defraying the cost of education of the 
people. 

These two reserves, the streets and the school sections, 
constitute a civic estate of almost incalculable value. 
No multi-millionaire would hesitate a moment to abandon 
his possessions if he could exchange them for the real 
estate originally devoted to education or the right of 
ownership in the streets. Unfortunately this immense 
estate, was left to the uncovenanted mercies of the city 
fathers, in the case of the streets, and to the Education 
Board in the case of the school sections. 

The greatest part of the educational estate in the city 
has long been frittered away. Instead of allowing the 
space as a sacred trust to be retained or let out on lease 
until such time as their real value could be utilized, the 
thriftless and corrupt authorities jobbed away section after 
section until only a beggarly remnant remained, which last 
year only yielded a rental of about a quarter of a million 
dollars. The Tribune building stands upon one lot which 
has escaped the general scramble. McVicker’s Theater is 
another prominent building which occupies a school 
section, and here and there throughout the city there are 
still parcels of property which are still held for their 
original purpose. One of these, lying on the outskirts, 
was saved from sharing the general fate by the action of 
a public-spirited young school teacher. Any proposal to 
to sell the school land must be approved by a plebiscite 
of the citizens, but as a rule the public was befooled 
and the trustees did just as they liked. On this occa- 


The Boodlers and the Boodled. 175 

sion, however, the job was frustrated by the teacher, 
who, hearing of the corrupt deal, quietly whipped up a 
contingent of citizens and when the matter came to the 
poll the scheme was voted down. The result is that 
the tract of land which would have been sold for a few 
hundred dollars is now worth as many thousands. Un¬ 
fortunately there was not a young teacher to stand in 
the gap in other cases and now there is but a miserable 
remainder of what was formerly a magnificent estate 
left in the hands of the Board of Education. 

Even this is by no means made the most of. On the 
day when the people of Chicago wake up and decide to 
look after their own property they will find that they 
will be able to realize a much greater revenue than they 
do at present from the school sections. One section was 
made over almost bodily to the railways for use as rail¬ 
way tracks at a mere nominal figure. A searching in¬ 
quisition into the present status of the school sections, 
with full particulars as to the terms on which they are 
held by the present occupants, would suggest many 
lines of inquiry that might be profitably pressed home. 

It is not, however, with the school sections that I pro¬ 
pose to deal, but rather with that other great urban 
estate, the streets of Chicago. The streets cannot be 
sold in small pieces so that the purchasei can take them 
away in his pocket. All that the city can part with is 
the right of way ; but this right of way, whether over, 
on or under the streets, is a property the net value of 
which cannot be valued at less than $5,000,000 a year, 
while it might very easily amount to twice or three 
times that sum. This estate yields $5,000,000 a year 
in hard cash, not one penny of which would be earned 
except for the permission to use the streets As this 
revenue, moreover, represents surplus profits, after 
paying all working expenses and the capital involved in 
the construction and maintenance of the plant, this repre¬ 
sents the sum available for the purposes of boodling. Bood- 
ling is a euphemism signifying the corrupt disposal of 


176 If Christ Came to Chicago . 

public property by the representatives of the people in 
return for price paid not to the public but to their dishon¬ 
est representatives. It would have been cheaper for the 
city of Chicago to have paid every one of her Aldermen 
$10,000 a year, if by such payment the city could have 
secured honest servants, than to have turned a pack of 
hungry Aldermen loose on the city estate with a mis¬ 
erable allowance of $156 a year but with practically un¬ 
restricted liberty to fill their pockets by bartering away 
the property of the city. Sixty-eight Aldermen at $10,- 
000 a year would only cost $680,000 per annum.. That 
would have been money well spent if it could have 
saved for the city $5,000,000 a year, which they have 
been flinging away in exchange for bribes which in no 
way correspond to the value of the property for which 
they were given. The Aldermen knew that they were 
dealing in stolen goods; they were fraudulent trus¬ 
tees who, in order to fill their own pockets, conveyed 
away the property of the city. Now it is an invariable 
rule that the thief is at the mercy of the “fence” or receiver 
of stolen goods. He cannot fix his own price. A $100 
watch will often fetch not more than $10 when it finds 
its way to the “ fence.” It is just the same in relation to the 
purchasers of city franchises. The predatory rich, the 
unscrupulous corporations who are forever endeavoring 
to snap up bargains, never dream of paying to the Aider- 
men the full value for the franchise which they pur¬ 
chase. There is no exact proportion whatever between the 
value of the franchise and the bribes which are neces¬ 
sary to secure its passage through the Council.* The 

*In the Chicago Record of February 19, 1894,1 find the following information on 
the subject: 

How much does it cost to pass a franchise ordinance through the Council? 

There is no set price, because one franchise may be worth more than another. 
The highest price ever paid for aldermauic votes was a few years ago when a meas¬ 
ure giving valuable privileges to a railway corporation was passed in the face of 
public condemnation. There were four members of the Council who received 
$25 000 each, and the others who voted for the ordinance received $8,000 each. An 
official whq was instrumental in securing the passage of the measure received the 
largest amount ever given in Chicago for a service of the kind. He received $100,- 
000 in cash and two pieces of property. The property was afterward sold for $111’- 
000. In one of the latest “boodle” attempts the Aldermen votingfor a certain fran¬ 
chise were supposed to receive $5,000 each. One of them, however, had been de- 



The Boodlers and the Boodlcd. 


177 

Aldermen, like all thieves, are bad men of business and 
are compelled to take what is offered to them. Occa¬ 
sionally they make a struggle to raise the price of their 
votes from $750 to $1,500, but they never venture to 
value their support at the value of the privilege which 
their votes confer. Hence the city receives nothing, 
while the Aldermen get very much less than what ought 
to have been the fair market price of the boodler if the 
market had been open and the transaction had not had to 
be carried on in secret. 

The method of boodling as prevailing in the City 
Council of Chicago for many years is very simple. 
Some man or some corporation wants something from 
the city. It may be some right of way or it may be a 
franchise for tearing up the streets in order to lay gas 
pipes, or it may be an ordinance sanctioning the lay¬ 
ing of a railway down a street or to make a grade cross¬ 
ing across one of the innumerable thoroughfares of the 
city. He can only obtain permission by obtaining it 
from the*City Council. Now the majority of the City 
Council consider that they are not in the Council “for their 
health.” As each of them went into it “for the sake of 
the stuff” and for whatever there was “in it” for them¬ 
selves;” they think these favors should not be granted 
without the receipt of a corresponding quid pro quo . 
Hence it is necessary, if you wish to get anything through 
the Council, to “square’ ’ the Aldermen. The “squaring’ ’ 
is done discreetly and with due regard to the fundamental 
principle which sums up the whole law of the boodler, 
namely: thou shalt not be found out. If it is a small 
thing, such as an ordinance sanctioning a projection 
over the street, it is not necessary to square more than 

ceived and was to get only $3,500. When he learned that he had been “frisked” of 
$1,500 he wept in anger and went over to the opposition, assisting in the final 
overthrow of the steal. 

The “ $5,000per vote ” is the high-water mark in the Council for the last four 
years. During 1891 and 1892 there were a dozen ordinances which brought their 
“bits,” yet in one case the price went down to $300. In spite of what has been said 
of the good old times these two years were among the most profitable ever known 
in criminal circles. 

When it becomes necessary to pass an ordinance over the Mayor’s veto the cost 
is 25 per cent more than usual. 


178 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

one Alderman. This can be done directly or through an 
intermediary. In all cases, however, the Alderman must 
be “seen.” Remittances through the post are discour¬ 
aged ; bank checks are at a discount; the transaction 
takes place in the presence of no third party, but face to 
face. If it is a very small matter a trifle will suffice, for 
your Alderman is not above small pickings by the way. 
It is a very different matter, however, when the question 
is one involving a railway franchise or a new gas or¬ 
dinance. Then much more elaborate machinery is em¬ 
ployed. The Council is sometimes divided and redivided 
into various rings. I11 the present Council one Aider- 
man, who usually can be found in the neighborhood of 
Powers & O’Brien’s saloon, can control forty others. 
The head of the big ring is the boss. There is also a 
smaller ring of ten, subsidiary to the greater ring and 
working together with it. The support of both rings 
is necessary when an ordinance is to be passed over the 
Mayor’s veto. The smaller ring, as the larger, has its 
own chief. 

When a franchise is applied for, or in other words 
something is proposed to be stolen from the city, it is 
necessary to ascertain on what terms the Aldermen will 
consent to hand the stolen goods out of the windows of 
the City Hall. For carrying on such negotiations, the 
first desideratum is a safe man, one who can be relied 
upon to keep his own counsel and who can be depended 
upon not to take more than a certain proportion of the 
swag. This gentleman is usually outside the Council, 
but he commands the confidence of both parties to the 
transaction. He is the go-between, and all transactions 
are conducted by him by word of mouth. He seeks the 
head of the ring to acertain whether the boys are hun¬ 
gry and with how little they can be induced to stand 
“pat.” Into the conferences between the go-between 
and the boys the world is not admitted. The secrets of 
a papal conclave are not more sacredly preserved than 
the details of the conferences between the chiefs of the 


The Boodlers and the Boodled . 


179 


corrupt ring in the City Hall and the corporations who 
are in for the deal. As both parties mean business they 
arrive at an understanding, and the money, whether it 
be $500, $750, $1,000 or $1,500, is agreed upon. The 
money is then put into the hands of the go-between and 
deposited in his own name in the strong room of a na¬ 
tional bank. There it remains, the purchase price of 
the fraudulent trustees of the people’s property. When 
the boys are assured that the money is banked in the 
name of say u Mike,” “Pat” or “ Billy,” as the case 
may be, the safe man whom they have trusted many 
times in the past and who has never gone back on his 
word, they proceed to fulfill their part of the bargain. 
An ordinance, usually drawn up by the corporation 
which proposes the steal, is intrusted to one of the 
gang, who introduces it with such garnishings as he 
deems desirable. If the franchise is not very objection¬ 
able on the face of it, it usually goes through. Aider- 
men are bound to oblige each other and as the city pro¬ 
perty has been chucked away every month without any 
protest, it is quite possible for the ordinance to pass with¬ 
out serious debate. If, on the other hand, there are any of 
the Aldermen who do not consider that they have been 
properly treated or who have been left out in the cold 
in the promised distribution of the boodle, there may 
be a debate with heated discussion. Sometimes, of 
course, this opposition may be perfectly genuine and 
due to the natural indignation of honest men against a 
bare-faced swindle. But even when this is the case, the 
opposition is generally aided by one or more of the 
boodling Aldermen who oppose the ordinance with a 
view of putting up their price. 

This maneuver is very familiar in the City Council. 
It is discounted by the manager of the ring, who knows 
the price of his boys as well as the farmer knows the 
price of his hogs. Sometimes, however, the recalcitrants 
are formidable enough to endanger the passage of the 
ordinance, especially if the Mayor vetoes it and the 


180 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

requisite two-thirds majority is required to pass it over liis 
veto. Then it is necessary that the boss “should be 
seen,” with the usual result Aldermen will reverse 
their votes with the most extraordinary facility, and this 
occurence is so familiar as hardly to call for a passing 
comment. A story is told of a very well known boodler 
in the town, who was at that time a member of the City 
Council, and is now an aspirant for a federal office. A 
railroad corporation was endeavoring to secure a fran¬ 
chise to give it the right of way into the heart of the 
city. The Alderman in question had not been offered, 
so the story runs, so much for his vote as he deemed it 
worth. He made an eloquent and impassioned speech 
against the tyranny of the railroad corporation, dwelt upon 
the devastation which it would make coming into the city, 
and he voted against the ordinance. The ordinance was 
passed, however, and vetoed by the Mayor. It was 
therefore necessary to secure the necessary two-thirds 
majority. The gentleman in question was to all appear¬ 
ances unshaken in his opposition. He had previously 
intimated to the ring that they would have to pay him 
his price or he would vote to sustain the Mayor’s veto. As 
they made no sign before the debate opened, he took part 
in it and began a denunciation of the railroad company 
and expressed his strong determination to defend the 
rights of the people. While he was speaking the chief of 
the ring laid an envelope before him, on the corner of 
which was written “$i,ooo.” Hastily thrusting it into his 
breast pocket he continued his speech, when suddenly, to 
the great amusement of those who were in the secret, he 
wound up with the declaration that, notwithstanding 
his detestation of railroad tyranny, and his reluctance 
to see the streets interfered with, still, under the present 
circumstances, seeing the great advantages which would 
accrue from having another depot in the center of the 
city, he would vote for the ordinance which he had 
previously opposed. The ordinance was passed and the 
Alderman was warmly congratulated by his new allies 


The Boodlers and the Boodled. 181 

upon his conversion. When the Council broke up they 
crowded him so that he did not have a chance of exam¬ 
ining his $1,000. When he returned home that night he 
said complacently to his wife, as he produced the envel¬ 
ope from his pocket, “See, dear, I have made $1,000 
this day,” and handed her the envelope. She opened 
it and found a $100 bill! The Alderman was sold. His 
vote was recorded and the ordinance was passed and the 
boodler was boodled. But as a rule, unless an Alderman 
plays very fast and loose, he is dealt with on the square. 

Of course every boodler swears that he has never 
touched boodle and as a matter of fact boodle is seldom 
distributed until after the campaign is over. It would 
never do for any Alderman to so far compromise his con¬ 
science as to give a corrupt vote in the Council. In most 
instances the Aldermen have never fingered a red cent on 
account of the ordinance for which they have voted. It 
is only after the ordinance has been passed and the stolen 
goods duly placed in the hands of the receivers that 
the division of the boodle takes place. The degree of 
secrecy which is observed in distributing their respec¬ 
tive shares depends upon the degree of caution on 
the part of the boys or the amount of fuss there has been 
in the papers.* As a rule the distribution is managed 
with discretion. The stipulated sum is sometimes placed 
in blank envelopes addressed to the Aldermen in an un¬ 
known handwriting, who find them in some mysterious 
way in the pockets of their overcoats. In some instances, 
notably one in which a late mayor was said to have 
been involved, the money was said to have been 
placed under the pillow, for the virtuous man refused even 
to touch it—at least until his visitors had left the room. 
By this means the needs of the Aldermen are satisfied, 
their consciences escape any pangs of remorse and there 
is no legal evidence of money having passed. 

*In the distribution, the men are graded on a ratio of “ one,” “one and a half” 
and “two.” The man who handles the funds and the bright gentlemen who in¬ 
dulge in the “con” talk would get $2,000 each. Another half-dozen or so would 
get $1,500 each and the price of a plain, untrimmed vote would be $1,000. 



182 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

The fact that money does pass is not disputed even by 
the Aldermen themselves. There are some members of 
the Council who are professional Aldermen, that is to 
say, they have no other profession except that of being 
an Alderman. They certainly do not live on the three 
dollars a sitting which is paid them for their loss of 
time. Aldermen of the city of Chicago have some special 
privileges which are denied to meaner mortals. On 
the production of their alderinanic star they are allowed 
to ride as dead heads on the street railways and enjoy all 
the conveniences of locomotion which have been secured 
by the corporations by the votes of themselves or their 
predecessors. They have also free entrance to all places 
of amusement, a privilege which they share with police¬ 
men and other servants of the public, but none of these 
recognized and legitimate privileges can explain the 
sustenance of a full bodied Alderman and his mainten¬ 
ance in style befitting a city father on three dollars a 
week. Where the money comes from is not known. 
It is not well to ask too many impertinent questions, 
but that it comes from somewhere and somebody may 
be taken for granted. “ In a fruitful year,” says the Rec¬ 
ord , “ the average crooked Alderman has made $15,000 
to $20,000.” 

The precise number of boodlers in the City Council is 
a question upon which there is often much discussion. 
A lawyer of a railway corporation, speaking on the sub¬ 
ject the other day, said, u There are sixty-eight Aldermen 
in the City Council and sixty-six of them can be bought. 
This I know because I have bought them myself.” This 
was probably a little exaggerated bluff on his part. No 
other authorities put the percentage of non-boodling Al¬ 
dermen so low as this. I have gone through the list of 
the Aldermen repeatedly, with leading citizens, both in¬ 
side the Council and outside, journalists, ministers and 
men of business. The highest estimate of non-boodlers 
that I have heard was eighteen out of sixty-eight. Be¬ 
tween the minimum of two and the maximum of eigh- 


The Booalers and the Boodled. 


183 

teen it will probably be safe to strike an average. We 
shall probably not err on the side of charity if we admit 
that there are ten Aldermen on the Council who have 
not sold their votes or received any corrupt considera¬ 
tion for voting away the patrimony of the people.. 

Ten righteous men would have saved Sodom ; but ten 
righteous Aldermen out of sixty-eight are not sufficient to 
save the City Hall from the reproach of being under the 
dominion of King Boodle. This is the abomination which 
maketh desolate set up in the Holy of Holies, for the 
City Council is the machinery through which the King¬ 
dom of God should be established in Chicago. It is the 
agency by which, if at all, progress will be made towards 
a happier and juster social state. The City Council is 
the direct heir and executor of the Christian church, 
and holds in trust many of the great Christian duties 
which in the earlier ages were exclusively performed 
by the Church. Yet here in this innermost Temple of 
the Lord we have this supreme infamy — swindlers 
and scoundrels sitting in the center of the whole 
machine and treating their duties and their trust as 
means by which they can fill their own pockets. 
Since Antiochus Epiphanes slaughtered a sow on the 
Mercy Seat in the Holy of Holies there has seldom 
been a more authentic fulfillment of the prophecy which 
speaks of the abomination which maketh desolate being 
set up where it ought not to be. 

These boodling Alderman are indeed the swine of our 
civilization, but unfortunately there is no Antiochus to 
offer them up as a sacrifice to the offended gods.* It is 
a constant amazement to me that secrets which are in 
the possession of at least fifty mortals, most of whom 

♦The Chicago Herald is the leading Democratic paper in Chicago. This is hew 
it describes the Democratic Aldermen of the existing Council: 

“ The average Democratic representative in the City Council is a tramp, if not 
worse He represents or claims to represent a political party having respectable 
principles anefleaders of known good character and ability. He comes from twenty- 
five or thirty different wards, some of them widely separated, and when he reaches 
the City Hall whether from the west, the south or the north division, he is in nine 
cases out of ten a bummer and a disreputable who can be bought and sold as hogs 
are bought and sold at the stockyards. Do these vicious vagabonds stand for the 
decency and intelligence of the Democratic party in Chicago ? ” 



184 If Christ Came to Chicago . 

are married and many of whom are given to their cups, 
should continue to be secrets, or that such a system 
of organized plunder can go on, without any authentic 
legal proof being attainable. To unearth such scan¬ 
dals, to bring them to light, to clear out the Augean 
stable of the City Hall seems to be an enterprise 
peculiarly inviting to the indomitable genius of an 
American newspaper. Unfortunately, whether it be, 
as I am frequently assured, because there are so many in 
it whom the newspapers dare not offend, or because of 
simple lethargy of conscience and indifference to the 
welfare of the town, which seems hardly less credible, 
or to some other cause, there is no doubt as to the fact. 
Every newspaper man in Chicago will tell you first that 
the system of government by boodle is going on all the 
time and in the same breath he will tell you that no 
newspaper has ever been able, excepting on one occas¬ 
ion, to secure legal evidence as to the actual passage of 
money. 

For the purpose of uncovering frauds which cost 
the city millions, it ought not to be impossible to 
purchase the confession of a boodler. Boodlers, accord¬ 
ing to the dealers in boodle, are divided into two 
categories, the honest and the dishonest boodlers. The 
honest boodler is the Alderman who, when bought, “stays 
bought,” and does not sell out to the other side ; the dis¬ 
honest boodler is perfectly willing to take money from 
both sides and dispose of his vote, not according to the 
first bid, but the last. Among these dishonest boodlers 
who are for sale all the time, it ought not to be impossi¬ 
ble to make a deal for a squeal, although the price might 
run high. Then again public-spirited citizens at the 
coming elections might find a much worse use for their 
money than to spend it in securing the election of an ex¬ 
perienced detective to the aldermanic chair, with a man¬ 
date to take care to be in everything that was going, with 
a view to a timely exposure of the secrets of the gang. 
If such a competent representative did his work well, he 


The Boodlers and the Boodled. 185 

would probably not have much difficulty in landing 
forty or fifty of his fellow members in the penitentiary 
at the end of the first twelve months. 

Discussing this question with a leading editor in Chi¬ 
cago, after he had put forward the usual futile pleas as 
to the difficulties of getting evidence, I suggested to him 
that nothing was easier than to obtain evidence as to the 
identity of the boodlers. All that it was necessary for 
him to do was to apply to the Council for a franchise, 
and he would soon be approached by the guilty parties. 
At present it might be somewhat difficult, owing to the 
fuss which has been made 011 the subject, but last 
year there would have been no difficulty whatever; 
for the boodling was carried on with such comparative 
recklessness that there would have been little or no 
difficulty in landing the boodlers. 

A gentleman who had applied to the Council for a 
franchise a short time ago and who had met with no 
success because he would not part with the needful, told 
me that he had been approached by an Alderman who 
intimated to him that he was the center of a group of 
ten who acted together in the Council, and he was able 
to communicate with another Alderman, whom he 
named, who was the head of a ring of forty and who 
could be got at, with the whole of his men, on the same 
terms that the Alderman and his ten were willing to 
dispose of their votes. The price, which he stated with 
business-like directness, was $1,000 each, with probably 
an extra $1,000 for the Alderman who arranged the 
business. My informant said that he had taken no 
steps to carry the matter further, inasmuch as he was 
determined not to bribe. 

“ But,” said I, “ why don’t you carry it a step further, 
and obtain legal evidence as to the identity of the 
Aldermen ? Get two or three persons if need be be¬ 
hind a screen or in a closet, who will be able to hear the 
whole of the conversation and who can confirm your 
testimony.” 


186 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

“ All very fine,” said he, “ and what would become of 
any hope of my getting a franchise hereafter ? I might, 
no doubt, as you say, convict one boodler, possibly two. 
Even if I had the whole of the witnesses’ statements 
taken down and sworn before a justice of the peace, 
even if they had furnished me with the lists of the forty 
and ten for whom I had to provide $1,000 each, that 
would not be legal evidence against anyone but the two 
persons with whom I had business. I might get two 
men sent to Joliet, but forty-eight men would remain in 
the Council, every one of whom would regard it as a 
personal question to refuse me my franchise if I wanted 
it. Even if half of them were rejected at the coming 
elections, the rest would still regard me with implacable 
hatred. A boodler never forgives a man who has shown 
up a brother boodler. You cannot expect me to do any¬ 
thing in the matter unless I am prepared to give up all 
hope of getting a franchise, or unless you reformers, on 
your part, would undertake to clear out the whole bood- 
ling gang from the City Hall. As for me I shall lie low 
and say nothing.” 

That conversation brings out very clearly the diffi¬ 
culty of obtaining evidence from the people who are ap¬ 
proached. It is equally obvious that those who are re¬ 
ceiving bribes are not likely to give evidence against 
themselves. Therefore, if anything has to be done, a 
detective Alderman should be elected, or a dishonest one 
should be bought up, or someone should promote a 
franchise for the express purpose of being approached. 
One of these methods would suffice to let daylight in 
upon this particularly discreditable section of Satan’s 
invisible world displayed. If one or other of these 
methods are not adopted, boodling is likely to remain the 
chief motive power of the City Council of Chicago. 


CHAPTER II. 

THE TYRANNY OF THE ASSYRIAN. 

The first impression which a stranger receives on 
arriving in Chicago is that of the dirt, the danger and the 
inconvenience of the streets. Those accustomed to the 
care that is taken in civilized cities to keep the road¬ 
way level and safe for teams and carriages stand simply 
aghast at the way in which the thoroughfares are cordu¬ 
royed by ill-laid, old-fashioned street car lines, the flange 
of which projects so much above the body of the rail on 
which the traffic runs as to be perpetually wrenching 
wheels off the axle. The civilized man marvels and 
keeps on his way. But from marvel he passes rapidly 
to disgust and indignation when he comes to the steam 
railroad tracks. Here indeed is the climax of reck¬ 
less incompetence in city management, the supreme 
example of the sacrifice of public safety, public prop¬ 
erty and public convenience to the interests of great 
corporations. The Pope has always clung to the title of 
Pontifex Maximus, but Chicago seems rather to aspire to 
be known as Pontifex Minimus. For instead of bridg¬ 
ing her railroads or making them bridge her streets 
she has avoided bridge making wherever possible 
and allowed the railroads to run along and across the 
public thoroughfares of a crowded city at the street 
level. 

If a stranger’s first impression of Chicago is that of 
the barbarous gridironed streets, his second is that of 
the multitude of mutilated people whom he meets on 
crutches. Excepting immediately after a great war, I 
have never seen so many mutilated fragments of 
humanity as one finds in Chicago. Dealers in artificial 
limbs and crutches ought to be able to do a better 


188 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

business in Chicago than in any other city I have ever 
visited. On inquiry I found that the second salient 
feature of Chicago was the direct result of the first. 
The railroads which cross the city at the level in 
every direction, although limited by statute and ordi¬ 
nance as to speed, constantly mow down unoffending 
citizens at the crossings, and those legless, armless men 
and women whom you meet on the streets are merely 
the mangled remnant of the massacre that is constantly 
going on year in and year out. 

“Can nothing be done?” you ask in amazement, and 
you are told that the Mayor is trying to do something 
but that it is very doubtful if he can succeed, the rail¬ 
road corporations are so powerful. “ But what about 
these infamous street car tracks with their murderous 
flanges ? Can nothing be done to substitute more civ¬ 
ilized tracks ? ” Another shake of the head, a shrug of 
the shoulders. “Ask Baron Yerkes! He owns Chi¬ 
cago.” So you go from one to another and always meet 
the same despondent, hopeless reply. Everywhere it is 
the same story. The corporations have grabbed or 
stolen everything. The citizens have not even a miser¬ 
able revenue from the franchises which gave the corpo¬ 
rations their power. They have barely a right-of-way 
in their own streets. It did not begin all at once, this 
usurpation, but now it is complete. 

It is the old story of the Arab and the Camel. That 
camel was the ancient prototype of the modern Amer¬ 
ican corporation. The citizens are crowded to the wall 
by the corporations which they permitted to occupy their 
streets. If the citizens don’t like it they can quit. 

The novelty, the wonder of all this is bewildering to 
an Englishman. His old ideas about the sovereignty of 
the American citizen, the free and independent way in 
which the denizens of the great Western Republic 
were believed to vindicate their rights, the traditions of 
liberty associated with the American people, all combine 
to obscure the truth. He cannot believe that things 


189 


The Tyranny of the Assyrian. 

are as bad as every one lie meets tells him they are. 
Even after many disillusions he clings to the fond 
delusion that he is sojourning among a free and self- 
governed people where the rule, “ of the people, for 
the people and by the people,” is universally recognized. 
It is only after a long time that he begins dimly to dis¬ 
cover that upon the ruins of popular liberty and repub¬ 
lican theories there has been established a plutocratic 
despotism as sordid, as tyrannical and as lawless as ever 
was permitted to scourge a people for its sins. 

I have watched the rapid evolution of Social Democracy 
in England. I have studied Autocracy in Russia, and The¬ 
ocracy in Rome, and I must say that nowhere, not even 
in Russia, in the first years of the reaction occasioned by 
the murder of the late Tzar, have I struck more abject 
submission to a more soulless despotism than that which 
prevails among the masses of the so-called free American 
citizens, when they are face to face with the omnipotent 
power of the corporations. “ Wealth,” said a workman 
bitterly to me the other day, “ has subjugated everything. 
It has gagged the press, it has bought up the Legislature, 
it has corrupted the judges. Even on the universities it is 
laying its golden finger. The churches are in its grasp. 
Go where you will, up and down this country, you will 
find our citizens paralyzed by a sense of their own 
impotence. They know the injustice, they know 
better than any the wrongs which they suffer, they mutter 
curses, but they are too cowed to do anything. They 
have tried so often and have been beaten so badly they 
have not the heart to try again.” 

What this man said, I have been hearing on every side, 
in all classes of society. There is the most helpless hope¬ 
lessness, utterly strange to me. The Russian peasant, 
suffering under a corrupt tchinovnik, who bows his head 
with the fatalism of his race, does not submit more ab¬ 
jectly to illegal exactions than the American citizen 
to the endless tyrannies of his plutocratic task-masters. 
The Russian peasant at least has faith in God^nd in the 


190 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

Tzar, and though, as he says, “ Heaven is high and the 
Tzar is far off, still who knows but that some day the 
wicked tchinovnik may meet his deserts?” But the Amer¬ 
ican, if he is religious, does not think the affairs of this 
world interests the Divine Being who is chiefly concerned 
with chants and prayers and sermons; and if he is irre¬ 
ligious, he does not think of God at all. As for the Tzar, 
there is no Tzar ; the only substitute on this side of the 
Atlantic for such a deliverer is the far-off, semi-mythical 
conception of arousing of public opinion. “If public 
opinion were aroused,” say some more sanguine citizens, 
“ something might be done.” “ When or how ?” sneer 
the pessimists. “ You forget that the country is not gov¬ 
erned by the opinion of its citizens, lawfully expressed at 
the ballot box. It is controlled by the Dead Hand. 
Read our Constitution and the Constitution of our State, 
and see how cunningly the money power is intrenched 
behind constitutional battlements. Think you that in a 
country where it is unconstitutional even to pass a truck 
act to save workmen from being plundered by their em¬ 
ployers, you can do anything? If you carry your reform¬ 
ers at next elections, the corporations will buy them up. 
If by some miracle they proved incorruptible, their legis¬ 
lation could be declared unconstitutional by the courts. 
And if you want to amend the Constitution, you have 
a very long row to hoe.” 

The root of the whole trouble is lack of faith in God. 
If there be no God, or if He does not heed such triviali¬ 
ties as mundane affairs, if there be no law, invisible but 
eternal, which is the silent but secret ally of every forlorn 
fighter for justice and for liberty, then it is not surprising 
that men’s hearts fail them for fear and they refuse to 
rouse them for the fray. 

The citizens have acted each man of them upon the 
principle of “each for himself and the devil take 
the hindmost.” They have made their fortunes if lucky, 
or they have failed if they were unlucky, but the devil has 
taken among other hindmost things the government of 


The Tyramiy of the Assyrian. 191 

the city. Instead of seeing to it that the authorities 
were just men, upright, fearing God and hating covetous¬ 
ness, they left the worst elements in the community to 
convert the city government into a joint stock corpora¬ 
tion for the spoliation of the people and the promotion 
of perjury, corruption and all unrighteousness. And 
now, having accepted Cain’s gospel and lived up to it, 
they are reaping the consequences. 

The more I look into the operations of the laws which 
have reduced the city of Chicago to this present unen¬ 
durable position face to face with the spoiler in the 
streets, the more I am reminded of the old familiar story 
of the fate of the Children of Israel after they had es¬ 
tablished themselves and had waxed fat and comfortable 
in the Land of Promise. As it was then, when the hosts 
of Moab and of Midian and of the Mesopotamians fell 
upon the chosen people and smote them and spoiled 
them, so it is to-day in the city of Chicago. 

Just before the French Revolution, Gibbon, on con¬ 
cluding his history of the Decline and Fall of the Roman 
Empire, complacently congratulated civilization upon 
the fact that there were no longer any hordes of barbar¬ 
ians on its frontiers who might repeat the havoc of At- 
tila the Hun, or Alaric the Goth. But a few years 
passed and the Reign of Terror proved that civilization 
could breed her own savages within her own frontiers, 
and that in the slums of her capitals were hordes as ca¬ 
pable of devastating the land as any of the hosts that 
followed Attila to the sack of Rome. The American 
Republic, in like manner, although too strong to be in any 
danger from without, is now learning that democracies 
can breed tyrants and that the conquerors of old who 
overran empires for the sake of plunder, and impover¬ 
ished whole nations to fill their treasuries, have their 
legitimate heirs and successors in the coalesced pluto¬ 
cracy of the United States. 

Chicago is as much under the rule of the Assyrian as 
were the Jews in olden time. Only our Assyrians seem 


192 


If Christ Came to Chicago. 

to come not from the Euphrates Valley, but from Phila¬ 
delphia. It is a great mistake to imagine that the 
Assyrian or any other Eastern conqueror established 
the minute despotism of the modern state. What these 
ancients wanted was not so much to interfere with the 
liberties of their subjects as to plunder them and to deal 
with them as they pleased. They killed a few, not 
more than they wished to, the rest they spared to earn 
the tribute money. Their interests were solely selfish. 
They left like the Turk of this day the local tribal 
or national organization, almost uninjured. All that 
they wanted was plunder, and in collecting that plunder 
they were as indifferent to the comfort and life and con¬ 
venience of their luckless subjects as any street rail¬ 
way company or railroad corporation or gas trust in the 
whole United States. 

As the Assyrian crushed Israel as the direct result of 
the misgovernment of the country and the indifference 
of its rulers to the welfare of the poor among the peo 1 
ple, so the present plight of the citizens of Chic¬ 
ago is the direct result of their past indifference to 
honesty and justice in their elected representatives 
Hence it is that Isaiah’s words apply almost without an 
alteration to the present situation: 

1. Wo unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and that write 
grievousness which they have prescribed ; 

2. To turn aside the needy from judgment, and to take away the 
right from the poor of my people, that widows may be their prey, and 
that they may rob the fatherless! 

3. And what will ye do in the day of visitation, and in the desola¬ 
tion which shall come from far ? to whom will ye flee for help ? and 
where will ye leave your glory ? 

4. Without me they shall bow down under the prisoners, and they 
shall fall under the slain. For all this his anger is not turned away, 
but his hand is stretched out still. 

5. O Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, and the staff in their hand is 
mine indignation. 

6. I will send him against a hypocritical nation, and against the 
people of my wrath will I give him a charge, to take the spoil, and to 
take the prey, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets. 

That, at least, it must be admitted, is exactly what 
our Assyrian has done and is doing. He takes the 


193 


The Tyranny of the Assyrian. 

spoil, he takes the prey and he treads us down like the 
mire of the streets. 

To those who have never visited Chicago, and to many 
who have grown up and become accustomed to the con¬ 
dition of things as they exist, the comparison between 
the great corporations and the Assyrian who oppressed 
the children of Israel may seem rhetorical or far-fetched. 
But anyone who will take the trouble to look into the 
facts will see that the comparison is strictly just, and 
after due allowance is made for the fervor and vivid 
imagery of the Jewish seer, no language can more ex¬ 
actly express what the corporationss are doing in Chicago 
than the verses in which he addresses the Assyrian. 

Chicago has not yet a patron saint. Considering 
the intense feverish restlessness which characterizes the 
city, an unkind wag suggested that St. Vitus, of St. Vi¬ 
tus’ dance, would be the most appropriate selection. 
Those, however, who take a bird’s-eye view of the 
city, looking down on it, say, for instance, from the 
Auditorium tower, would have no hesitation in deciding 
that Chicago is the living prototype of St. Lawrence, 
who was stretched upon a gridiron and whose torture is 
one of the familiar horrors of Catholic picture galleries. 
This great city with a million and a half of population 
is stretched over a gridiron of rails which cross and re¬ 
cross the city and form a complex network of tracks, 
every mesh of which is stained with human blood. It is 
not for nothing that the dismal bell of the locomotive 
rings incessantly as it tears its way into the heart of Chi¬ 
cago through the streets. In England the locomotives 
use the whistle, not the bell, and this solemn weird toll¬ 
ing of the bell is very impressing to the imagination of 
the visitor who hears it for the first time sounding every 
hour, year in, year out, summer and winter. As regularly 
as the sun rises these great engines slay their man in 
and upon the streets of Chicago. No other great city in 
the world has allowed its streets to be taken possession 
of to a similar extent, and the massacre resulting there- 


94 


If Christ Came to Chicago. 

from is greater than that of many battles. We in Eng¬ 
land have always one or more little wars upon our hands on 
our frontiers where they impinge upon the lawless tribes 
in Africa and Asia, but I do not think that it is too much 
to say that in the last five years we have had fewer soldiers 
killed in our wars all round the world than have been 
slaughtered in the streets of Chicago at the grade cross¬ 
ing. The figures are: in 1889, 257; 1890, 294; 1891, 323; 
1892, 394; 1893, 431. As might be expected, the num¬ 
ber of these railroad murders steadily increases with the 
growth of the population. I11 the city of Chicago there 
are under 2,500 miles of roadway, but there are 1,375 
miles of railroad track within the same area. The rail¬ 
roads traverse the streets at grade in 2,000 places. Un¬ 
der Mayor Wasliburne a commission was appointed to 
investigate the matter, and an effort was made to ascer¬ 
tain the obstruction to traffic caused by this system. Mr. 
E. S. Dreyer, speaking at the Sunset Club, where the sub¬ 
ject was-discussed on February 1, said: 

Our terminal commission caused to be taken, by careful enumera¬ 
tors, a count at thirty-six of our most dangerous crossings on a certain 
business day, from the hour of six in the morning to seven in the even¬ 
ing, and their report showed that there passed during that time over the 
thirty-six crossings 68,375 vehicles, 9,145 street cars, 221,942 street car 
passengers and 119,181 pedestrians. The gates at these crossings were 
lowered 3,031 times, and the total time the gates were closed on the 
thirty-six crossings was over twelve hours, delaying 15,000 vehicles, 
2,320 street cars with 51,367 passengers and 18,212 pedestrians. 

These figures, be it noted, have only regard to thirty- 
six of the 3,000 crossings in the city. For years past 
the city has protested, but protested in vain. The rail¬ 
roads ride roughshod over the convenience, the rights and 
the lives of the citizens. Sisera with his 900 chariots 
of iron never tyrannized more ruthlessly over the 
Hebrews than the railroads with their fire chariots of 
steel have lorded it over the city of Chicago. 

Every week in Chicago you read of grade crossing acci¬ 
dents, and it is very seldom that you hear of anything 
being done to saddle anyone with the responsibility for 
the loss of life. The evidence before the jury is usually to 


The Tyranny of the Assyrian. 195 

the following effect; the gates were not lowered, the 
watchman was not in attendance, no whistle was 
sounded, no bell was rung. The deceased was crossing 
the track all unwitting of any danger, when a train 
dashed up with the inevitable result. In many cases 
the bodies are mutilated out of all human semblance. 
The nightmare imagination of those gruesome artists 
who exult in describing the torture and mutilation of help¬ 
less victims could depict nothing more terrible than the 
human sacrifices which are offered up daily on the altar 
of the Railway Moloch by the city of Chicago. Very 
rarely is anyone saddled with responsibility. On Feb¬ 
ruary 2 a jury returned a verdict against one of the divis¬ 
ion superintendents of the Chicago, Rock Island and Pa¬ 
cific Railroad, but nothing seems to have come of it. 
The only redress is to prosecute the railroad company for 
damages. This often involves a law suit with the casualty 
companies with whom the railways have contracted for 
all liabilities for injury to life and limb. The railraods 
have taken the precaution of protecting themselves by 
law. By an infamous act, boodled through the Illinois 
Legislature by railroad influence, no jury is allowed to 
award more than $5,000 damages against the railroads 
for causing the death of any citizen. 

The usurpation of the streets of the city is none the less 
a usurpation because it was achieved by gold and not by 
steel. In many cases railroads have laid their tracks 
through the streets without even going through the for¬ 
mality of asking for a franchise. They have treated Chi¬ 
cago as a conquered territory. The strolling Tartar, who 
in the Middle Ages wandered absolute lord over Russia, 
was the prototype of the railroad corporations in the cap¬ 
ital of the West. For the use of the streets the railroads 
have not paid a cent into the City Treasury. Whatever 
payment they made was made corruptly and went into the 
pockets of the Aldermen, and sometimes of the Mayor. 
If they paid $100 a mile for way-leave that would bring 
in the city a revenue of nearly $200,000. So far from 


196 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

doing any such thing, the railroads have imposed upon 
the city an expenditure which is estimated at $30,000 in 
the salaries of twenty-five policemen and other employes, 
paid by the city for the purpose of raising and lowering 
the gates and of warning citizens to escape slaughter. 
Further, they have put the city to the expense of millions 
in the building of viaducts over their tracks where the ex¬ 
penditure of life became too great even for Chicago to 
tolerate. I11 1892 the cost of maintaining these via¬ 
ducts was no less than $146,000. For the privilege 
therefore of keeping the annual total of human sacri¬ 
fices down to a victim a day the city pays blood money 
amounting to $176,000 a year. 

But, it may be urged, the city has in its own hands the 
power of taxation and it can recoup itself from the enor¬ 
mously valuable property within its limits. Flere again 
we are confronted with another specimen of the way in 
which the citizen goes to the wall. Mr. Washburne, 
when Mayor of Chicago, stated publicly that the value 
of railway property in the city was not less than $350,- 
000,000. It is to-day assessed at less than $19,000,000. 

The steam railroads are the worst oppressors from the 
point of view of human life, but from the point of view 
of plunder and of injury to health and happiness the 
street railways leave them far behind. In a city like 
Chicago, where the distances are so great as constantly 
to occasion the regret that the building of the city had 
not been postponed until the race had developed wings, 
street railways are as indispensable as the streets, and 
they should no more be handed over to speculative 
corporations than the highroads. From the practical 
point of view it is pretty much the same thing, for the 
owner of the street railway has not only the railway but 
has also the street. He breaks up the driveway and 
treats the road as though it belonged to him. The 
arguments against municipal ownership of street rail¬ 
ways would have more force if the speculative corpora¬ 
tions who are in possession of the monopoly of streets 


The Tyranny of the Assyrian. 197 

could be kept up to mark by competition. In the neces¬ 
sity of things this cannot be. The street railway is a 
monopoly, and a monopoly of service for the whole 
people should be in the hands of the representatives 
of the whole people. The usual result has followed in 
Chicago. There is nothing about which there is more 
clamor than about the infamies of street railways. 

The overcrowding of the cars is little less than a public 
scandal. The city railway companies have plenty of cars, 
and plenty of power, for the cables run just the same 
whether there are few cars on the line or many, but in 
order to save conductors’ salaries they cynically compel 
one-half of the traveling public of Chicago to travel 
without seats. A Chicago car at the rush time, in the 
middle of the day or early in the morning or late at night, 
is a sight which once seen is not easily forgotten. Every 
seat is filled and all the space between the seats is choked 
with a crowded mass of humanity. The unlucky individ¬ 
uals are holding on by a strap from the roof. At the 
platform at each end of the car a crowd is hanging on by 
its eyelids as thick as bees when they are swarming. 
The first time I saw it, it reminded me of one of Dore’s 
pictures of a scene in Dante’s hell. When appealed to 
to give better accommodation those companies which are 
paying from 9 to 24 per cent reply that their dividends 
come from the people who hang on by the straps, and that 
things are to remain as they are. The cable service, es¬ 
pecially on the North Side, is perpetually breaking down, 
the horse cars are miserably slow, badly horsed and most 
inadequate. It was quite recently that the tyrants of the 
car scouted the idea of heating them in winter time and 
compelled their luckless travelers to shiver for an hour 
at a time in unwarmed vehicles. The rails are laid in 
such a fashion that they provoke the incredulous com¬ 
ments of a stranger, and some of the busiest roadways of 
the town are crossed and recrossed by a corduroy of steel 
inconceivable to anyone who has ever lived in a civilized 
country. When the snow comes the companies simply 


198 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

sweep it to either side of the track ; and notwithstand 
ing the city ordinances compelling them to remove the 
snow, they leave it lying on the streets with the result 
that this winter the indignant citizens retaliated by pil¬ 
ing the snow over the tracks and stopping traffic. Scrim- 
ages ensued which threatened on more than one occa¬ 
sion to end in serious riots. Even if they could not run 
more cars, the South Side cable could follow the universal 
custom of the Old World and carry passengers on the 
roof, where in five days out of six it is much pleasanter 
than the inside. Mr. Pullman has devised an admirable 
double-deck car, but as its adoption would require the 
changing of the rolling stock that is not to be thought of; 
for nothing is bad enough for those who use the street 
cars in Chicago so long as it does not fall to pieces on 
the line of track. And this right to compel the citizens 
to endure all these costs and exactions was obtained by 
bribery of the most barefaced kind. 

It is not only the surfaces of the streets which were 
handed over to the street railway companies by boodling 
Aldermen. They are in possession at the present moment 
of two tunnels under the river, both of which have been 
handed over to them without any adequate return. The 
Washington tunnel, which it would have cost the com¬ 
panies thousands to build, was given them on condition 
that they moved the Madison street bridge to Washing¬ 
ton. This cost them a bagatelle. A similar preposter¬ 
ous agreement handed over the La Salle tunnel to Mr. 
Yerkes’ company on the North Side. Two bridges were 
put up, at Clark Street and Wells Street, which cost the 
company about one-tenth one-fifth of what the tunnel cost 
the city, and much less than what it would have cost the 
company to construct the tunnel at the time they took 
it over. The city was plundered in the matter of the tun¬ 
nels to the extent of at least one million dollars and it 
would have cost the railway corporations twice as much 
again to have built the tunnels themselves.* 

The financial result of these privileges would make the 


199 


The Tyranny of the Assyrian. 

mouth of a Turkish Pasha water. The following are 
the figures : 

Net earnings after pay- Paid 

ing interest on bonds. to the 
Capital. Dividend. 1894. City 

North Chicago... .$ 8,000,000 $1,600,000 22,687 

West Chicago. 10,000,000 9 2,340,000 20,874 

City of Chicago. 24 8,500,000 11,811 

Five or six years ago the street railway companies se¬ 
cured by the usual means an extension of their fran¬ 
chises for another fifteen years ; the net result of which 
is that they will continue to enjoy the undisputed mono¬ 
poly which brings them in these enormous dividends 
until 1904. If the franchises, instead of being renewed 
six years ago, had been allowed to lapse, as they would 
have done about the present time, it would have been 
possible for the city to have possessed itself of the car 
lines upon terms which would have been equitable to the 
company and would have yielded the city a net annual 
income of at least four million dollars. That is to say 
that the city has been robbed by its corrupt Aldermen of 
nearly twice as much as the total sum raised every year 
by the pew rents, collections and by all the machinery of 
church finance. Or to put it another way, the tax upon 
real and personal property in the city of Chicago does 
not amount to more than $4,800,000 a year. Almost the 
whole of this sum might have been raised by the city 
railway corporations in the hands of an honest City 
Council, f 

♦See an admirable article in the Chicago Tribune , April 4, 1892, on this subject. 
It is reprinted in a most useful pamphlet by Barton A. Alrich, entitled, “How 
Should Chicago be Governed?” 

fOn this point I may quote the published statement of Mr. W. J. Onahan, 
who for two years was Comptroller of the City Treasury. Mr. Onahan says : 

“ If the city, since it became a city, had received proper annual compensation 
for all the franchises that have been ignorantly and corruptly disposed of for 
nothing, Chicago would today have income enough to run its affairs without 
levying a dollar taxation on real estate or personal property. I can prove it if 
called upon. Consider the privileges that have been given the steam railways 
from the Illinois Central to the last to come in. In connection with these steam 
railways look at the countless private switches and tracks—all given away. Then 
the street railways, the gas companies, the electric lighting companies, the tele¬ 
phone companies, the water privileges, dock privileges, and I don’t know what 
all. Why, every one of these favored interests, which secured their privileges by 
bribing Aldermen and corrupting officials, ought to be millions in annual tribute 
to the city. I repeat that if our rights in this regard had been looked after in the 
beginning and been carefully guarded ever since, there would be no need now to 
talk about taxes or their injustices and inequalities. J> 





200 


If Christ Came to Chicago. 

Instead of this sum the city railway companies pay 
over to the city a license tax amounting last year to 
$50,000. Even here there is a swindle into which Mayor 
Hopkins is making diligent inquiries. The companies 
pay a tax of $50 a year upon the cars in service. But 
no car is held to be in service by the companies unless 
it makes thirteen round trips every day. As half the 
cars do not make thirteen round trips a day, they do not 
pay the license, and the city loses $50,000 a year in con¬ 
sequence. 

The total capital of the street railway companies, as 
shown by latest published account, is only $26,500,000. 
If all the working expenses were unchanged and the 
company received five per cent upon its stock, this would 
still leave a balance available to the city of $4,000,000, 
the sum which the Assyrians levy upon the citizens 
of Chicago.* 

The third of the oppressors under whose tyranny 
Chicago is groaning is the Gas Trust. To begin with, 
there ought not to be any gas trust in Chicago. By the 
law of the State of Illinois, trusts are illegal, and have 
no legal rights. The seven companies, however, who 
form the Trust, keep their accounts separate, and 
swear that they are no trust—for subterfuge and 
trickery are among the weapons of the oppressor in 
every age. Among the other limitations of the prerog¬ 
atives of the city of Chicago it is not allowed to own 
or operate its own gas plant. It has therefore tried to 
get cheap gas by encouraging competition. Franchises 
were granted to various corporations, but they always 
amalgamated and combined in order to plunder the 

*The fact is that in a city like Chicago a street railway franchise is worth more 
than most gold mines, and if a good bargain is made the cars will not only carry 
the citizens, they could also carry the cost of governing the city Take for instance 
the case of Philadelphia. Ten Street Car Companies in ten years, ending 1891, on 
a paid up capital of $5,840,000, drew out in dividends $15,000,000, an average of 26 
percent. The market price of their stock in February, 1893, was $38,500,000. If 
the city of Philadelphia had invested the original capital on behalf of the citizens 
had charged 5 percent interest and had applied the balance to the city treasury, it 
would have made an annual profit of $1,200,000 plus an actual investment in the 
value of the property amounting to $3,250,000 a year. Philadelphia therefore lost 
nearly $4,500,000 a.year because the city did not run the street cars. 



201 


The Tyraimy of the Assyrian. 

public for the benefit of the share-holders. Instead of 
being a check on each other, they are now all united in 
maintaining their monopoly. They stayed prosecution 
by virtue of an illegal agreement executed under the 
Washburne administration, by which they were able to 
purchase the acquiescence of the city in their illegal 
position, in consideration of a reduction which has 
brought the price of gas down to $1.15 per thousand, 
and secured to the city three and a half per cent of its 
gross income which amounted in 1891 to $150,000. 
Before the companies amalgamated Chicago paid 
$1.00 per thousand feet. After the amalgamation 
the price was raised immediately to $1.25, from 
which it is to be reduced each year at the rate of five 
cents until it reaches the old level of a dollar. As the 
cost of manufacture is not more than 33 cents per thou¬ 
sand feet, and the cost of distribution, leakage, etc., does 
not exceed 33 cents, which is a very liberal allowance, 
that leaves at present prices fifty cents available for 
profits and dividends. Before the Gas Trust the Gas 
Light and Coke Company^ using the old processes, 
could not manufacture the gas at less than 65 cents 
per thousand feet, but it was nevertheless able to sell 
it at a dollar a thousand feet, and pay a dividend of 
seven per cent on its capital stock, besides putting an 
additional two per cent into an expansion fund. By the 
introduction of water gas and new and improved pro¬ 
cesses of manufacture, the cost of production was cut 
in half, the figures for the last year on the North Side 
being 30.13 cents, and on the South Side 29.16 cents. 
Thus the immediate result of the illegal monopoly 
formed by the combination of the seven gas companies 
has been to raise the price of gas to the consumer at the 
very time when the cost of its production was reduced 
fifty per cent to the producer. In order to profit by this 
the Gas Trust has watered its stock to an extent almost 
inconceivable. According to the best authorities in the 
gas making business, there ought not to be a greater 


202 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

capital expenditure for every thousand feet of gas sup¬ 
plied than $3.00 but three years ago the capital of the 
Gas Trust was $10.65 P er thousand feet. The process of 
inflating, or watering, or whatever the term is 
which implies the creation of fictitious capital 
value, has gone on apace since then, and it 
probably reaches now near $12 per thousand. The 
watered stock and outlying bonds mount up to be¬ 
tween fifty and sixty million dollars. Now the whole of 
the city of Chicago could be supplied with gas, and a 
brand-new plant, at an expenditure, taking the present 
consumption of gas at four thousand million feet, at a 
capital expenditure of $12,000,000, interest upon which 
at five per cent would only be $600,000 a year. If you 
add $400,000 for a sinking fund, you would have a net 
charge of a million dollars a year as sufficient to pay in¬ 
terest upon capital, and extinguish the whole debt in 
twenty years; whereas the Gas Trust is at present dis¬ 
tributing from two millions to two millions and a half in 
interests and dividends every year. A sum, therefore, 
between one million and o.ne million and a half repre¬ 
sents the enforced tribute extorted from the oppressed 
citizens by this illegal monopoly, under virtue of an 
illegal agreement made two years ago, in order to evade 
a law suit. 

If the Gas Trust had supplied ideally pure gas, and if in 
every respect it ministered to the convenience of the con¬ 
sumer, the hatred with which it is regarded would be con¬ 
siderably modified, and it is probable that the citizens 
would not object to pay a dollar for their gas rather than 
face the inconvenience of tearing up their streets. But 
the consumers complain bitterly of the quality of the gas 
and of the rule by which the trust compels every consumer 
to deposit $10 before a meter is placed on the premises, 
only $7 of which is ever returned. By this means the 
trust obtains possession of a capital of at least a million 
dollars, and, what is much more serious, it practically 
shuts gas out from all the smaller householders, 


203 


The Tyranny of the Assyrian. 

who might be willing to pay even $1.15 for their gas, 
but who are not able to put up $10 in advance. Besides 
this the Gas Trust is as arbitrary as any Persian Satrap 
in its dealings with the citizens. No matter how much 
the gas may be called for in various regions to which it 
has not yet laid its mains, it turns a deaf ear to all ap¬ 
peals. It has got a very good thing as it is and it does 
not see why it should trouble itself merely to please con¬ 
sumers, who, after all, are as the mire under its feet. 

There is only one way out and that is for the city to own 
and operate its own gas plant. When that comes to pass 
the Gas Trust will be confronted with the alternative of 
handing over its mains and its meters at a fair valuation, 
which ought not in any case to exceed the sum for which 
the plant could be duplicated, or if it refused these 
terms, then the city would be obliged to bring it to terms 
by introducing municipal gas. This could be supplied at 
75 cents per 1,000 feet. It would be a great nuisance 
tearing up the streets, a nuisance which should not be 
incurred excepting when the work was done by the mun¬ 
icipality for the municipality. It might, however, be 
worth while doing it in order to rid the town of the 
garrote of the Gas Trust. 

Compared with those great oppressors other minor 
monopolies hardly deserve notice, but it is worth while 
illustrating the tyranny of the Gas Trust by the interdict 
which it succeeded in placing upon the development of 
municipal lighting. At the present moment the munici¬ 
pality owns and operates its own electric light plant. 
This was permitted by the Legislature on the strict con¬ 
dition that no private consumers should be supplied by 
the municipality. The result is that the municipal 
plant is idle half its time. Even as it is the introduc¬ 
tion of municipal electricity into the town enabled the 
city to reduce the cost of each arc lamp from $175 to 
$100 a year, and if the plant could be still further 
utilized that would be reduced still further by $25 per 
annum. That is the fine imposed upon the city by the 


204 If Christ Came to Chicago . 

Gas Trust and other monopolies to check the legitimate 
development of municipal enterprise. For private illum¬ 
inating purposes electricity is far too dear and the price 
would be cut at once if the municipality were allowed 
to use its engines, which are standing idle. So little does 
the Gas Trust care for the interests of the citizens that, 
instead of lighting the streets for nothing, as it might 
well be expected to do, it actually charges the city 25 
per cent more for what is consumed in the street lamps 
than it* charges the private consumer. The charge 
for street lamps is $25 a year, and. this amounts to a 
charge of at least #1.42 per thousand feet as against 
$1.15 charged to the private consumer! Twenty-six 
cents a thousand feet is the extra charge levied upon 
the city for all the gas which it consumes. That is the 
gratitude of the Gas Trust for its franchise. It is a kind 
of Gessler’s cap, the last crowning insult which exulting 
tyranny inflicts upon its victims. 

Another monopoly which owes its existence to a fran¬ 
chise recklessly disposed of is the telephone company. 
This is in possession of the field. Its prices are 
fixed at an excessive rate, and in return for this 
privilege to plunder, it pays the municipality a pepper¬ 
corn rent upon its net receipts. But as it publishes 110 
accounts and gives no information, the municipality is 
obliged to take whatever the Company pleases to pay. 
This, however, will be looked into. 

When once an honest Council is established at the 
City Hall it will be found a matter of comparative ease 
to check the tyranny of the Assyrian. That at least is 
my belief. At the same time I must admit that the 
opinion of the majority of those who have spoken to me 
on the subject is that it is hopeless. I have talked until 
I have been tired to one citizen after another and have 
received from them the most despondent and discourag¬ 
ing replies. “It is no use,” they say, “do what you 
please, they will best you in the long run; there are too 
many in it to hope for any success,” and so forth and so 


The Tyranny of the Assyrian . 205 

forth. It is as if they were Christian Rayahs in a Turk¬ 
ish province and I was a Pan-Slavonic emissary endeav¬ 
oring to rouse them to a struggle against the oppressor. 

There is always the despairing shrug of the shoul¬ 
der and the remark that it is no good putting a man up 
to be slaughtered. The others are too strong. For¬ 
tunately Mayor Hopkins does not seem to think so and 
behind Mayor Hopkins are the awakened intelligence and 
the aroused moral consciousness of the city. 

It is no use pretending that these tyrants are so strong 
that they cannot be grappled with. They have fran¬ 
chises, no doubt, and many legal privileges, and they are 
in possession; but a resolute Mayor backed up by an 
honest City Council could very soon bring them to their 
reason. It is the old story of the Normans and the 
Jews. The nobles after the Crusades were practically 
helpless in their hands. Their estates were mortgaged 
and the astute money lender of those days had taken as 
much pains to complete the ruin of his victim as Mr. 
Yerkes, the corporations and the trusts have taken to 
secure their hold upon the vitals of Chicago. At last 
the tyranny became intolerable. The noble, being a 
practical man was indisposed, after fighting the infidel 
in the Holy Land, to submit calmly to the exactions 
of the Jew at home. He replied to the protests of his 
creditor, who pointed to his bonds and his papers, bv 
saying, “ It is true, you have my bond, but I have got 
your person, your property and all that is yours.’' 
When the Jew did not at first appreciate the significance 
of this argument, the noble clapped him into his dun¬ 
geon and used strong and piercing arguments in the 
shape of the extraction first of one eye-tooth and then of 
another until such time as he consented to be reasonable 
and make fair terms with his jailers. Herein lies a hint 
for every city administration which lies prone beneath 
the heel of the oppressor. The corporation may have fran¬ 
chises, but the right of enforcing new conditions lies in 
the hands of the City Council. And, moreover, they can 


20 6 


If Christ Came to Chicago. 

soon bring the corporations to reason if they insist that 
no further concessions under any conditions shall be 
granted to any existing railroad, street railroad or gas 
company until it has delivered the citizens from the 
present tyranny. No railroad ought, for instance, to 
be allowed to lay another rail within the limits of 
Chicago until it has undertaken to elevate the tracks. 
By imposing new conditions, or by the refusing of new 
franchises, the city has the game in its own hands. 
But besides this there are great resources dormant in the 
hands of the authorities in the shape of a searching 
inquiry into the provisions of the existing franchises, and 
an inquiry into the extent to which the corporations have 
already forfeited their rights by non-use or mis-use of the 
privileges intrusted to them. It will be found in almost 
every case that the corporations have trespassed without 
warrant upon the public domain. They have laid down 
two tracks where they had only received permission to 
lay one, they have laid down rails in streets for which 
they had obtained no permission at all, and they have 
failed to take any adequate precautions to make the 
streets safe for the people who have a right to use them. 

The leading case which may be quoted in this connec¬ 
tion is not to be found in the law books but it applies 
admirably nevertheless. It is to be found in the Mer¬ 
chant of Venice, where Shy lock insists upon having his 
pound of flesh. “ ’Tis so written in the bond to the 
bond he has appealed, to the bond he must go. It would 
seem that already in Chicago a Daniel had come to 
judgment in the person of the Mayor. 


CHAPTER III. 

DIVES THE TAX DODGER. 


If Christ came to Chicago and took any practical in¬ 
terest in the establishment of His Kingdom in the city, 
the assessment system would be radically reformed. 
This is not a question of politics or of administra¬ 
tion or of finance. It is a question of elementary 
morality. For the assessment system is based on a lie. 
It is worked by perjury, and it has as its natural and 
necessary results injustice, corruption, and the plunder of 
the poor. Its continuance for another year would be a 
practical recognition of the devil’s dominance and as¬ 
cendancy in Chicago, which it is idle to attempt to coun¬ 
terbalance by such lip worship and devout genuflections 
as we blasphemously dignify by the name of Divine 
service in our churches. 

A great deal has been written about assessment, but 
many good people in Chicago are still utterly unaware 
of what it means or how it is worked. Otherwise, it is 
impossible that in a city nominally Christian, which is 
studded with churches and littered with Bibles, such a 
supreme embodiment of fraud, falsehood and injustice 
could have been allowed to exist for a single hour. 
Therefore it may be that the best service I can render is 
to print in plain English the simple truth about the sys¬ 
tem and how it works. 

The first remarkable feature about the assessment sys¬ 
tem of Cmcago is that it puts a higher premium upon 
perjury than upon any other vice or virtue under heaven. 
The culture of perjury is not usually regarded as one of 
the legitimate objects of a civilized, to say noth¬ 
ing of a Christian, government. But in Chicago perjury 
may almost be regarded as a protected industry. Cer- 


20 7 


2 o 8 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

tainly there is a fuller reward offered to professional per¬ 
jurers than to any other officials in the employ of the 
city. It may perhaps be argued that the virtue of the 
Chicago citizen is so austere that it is necessary to offer 
abnormally high inducements to induce them to damn 
their souls by perjury; but judging from the eager com¬ 
petition there is for the post of professional perjurer, 
there would seem but little basis for this argument. 
Whatever may be the cause, there is a heavier sum in 
solid dollars pocketed every year by the official perjurers 
in Chicago, than is paid to any other officials in the ser¬ 
vice of the city. 

Perjury ought not to be so rewarded. When the Lord 
cometh, it is written on the last page of the Old Testa¬ 
ment Scripture He would “ come near in judgment as a 
swift witness against false swearers.’’ “For I am the 
Lord, I change not,” was the message given through 
the Hebrew prophet, and if He has not changed there 
will be a very poor lookout for the Town Assessors of 
the City of Chicago when they stand before Him to render 
account. For each and all of the whole eleven of them are 
false swearers. They peijure themselves habitually and 
necessarily as a part of the system. As the calling of a 
pirate is based upon the negation of the moral law con¬ 
cerning theft and murder, so the calling of an Assessor 
presupposes the annulling of the condemnation which 
the moral law pronounces upon the false oath. This is 
a strong saying, but it is literally and exactly true and 
is proved on the authority of the latest official document 
issued by the Comptroller of the City of Chicago. Mr. 
Ackerman, the Comptroller in question, in his report on 
the system of assessments says: 

There are now eleven Assessors, whose duty it is to assess values 
in the South, West and North Divisions of the city and in the towns 
of Lake View, Jefferson, Hyde Park, Calumet, Norwood Park, South 
Chicago, Town of Lake, and Rogers Park. When they return their 
books to the County Clerk they make oath that the book contains 
a correct and full list of the real property subject to taxation in their 
town, so far as they have been able to ascertain the same, and that the 
assessed value set down in the proper columns opposite the several 


209 


Dives the Tax Dodger . 

kinds and descriptions of property is in each case the fair cash value 
of such property to the best of their knowledge and belief (except as 
corrected by the Town Board). 

The Assessors must, therefore, as a condition of their 
office, swear that the returns which they make in their 
official capacity are correct and full and that in each 
case they have set down the fair cash value of the prop- 
erty to the best of their knowledge and belief. Lest 
they should be liable to make any mistake as to what 
constitutes “the fair cash value” of the property they 
assess, it is expressly laid down by the Statutes of Illinois 
how that fair cash value is to be ascertained. 

The Revenue Law of the State, Revised Statutes, 
Chap. 120, Sec. 4, page 1,266, in the rules for valuing 
real estate, provides: 

1. That each tract of land or real property shall be valued at its 
fair cash value, estimated at the price it would bring at a fair volun¬ 
tary sale. 

2. Taxable leasehold estates shall be valued at such a price as 
they would bring at a fair voluntary sale for cash. 

3. When a building or structure is located on the right of way 
of any canal, railroad or other company, leased or granted for a term 
of years to another, the same shall be valued at such a price as such 
building or structure and lease or grant would sell at a fair voluntary 
sale for cash. 

There can be no possible loophole of escape for the 
Assessor. He must swear that he has made a full and 
correct return, that each item of property is assessed at 
its fair cash value and that he has estimated it at the 
price it would bring at a fair voluntary sale. 

Now there is not one of the whole eleven Assessors, if 
they were put in a row and asked the question at the 
Day of Judgment, or even before a Grand Jury, who 
would deny that they each and all habitually make 
false oaths. They know they never make either full or 
correct returns, they never assess any item of property 
at its fair cash value, and they never estimate their 
assessments at the price the article assessed would bring 
at a fair voluntary sale. That this is so is obvious the 
moment the matter is looked into, whether we take the 


210 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

totals of the realty and of personalty or whether we ex¬ 
amine the details of particular assessments. 

We will begin with the totals. The fact that Chicago 
has grown enormously in population, in area and in 
wealth in the last quarter of a century is one of the 
most conspicuous and. indisputable facts of contemporary 
history. Its increase is one of the phenomena which 
have attracted the attention of the whole world. With¬ 
out going back farther than 1867, the following figures 
will suffice to illustrate the way in which Chicago has 
advanced by leaps and bounds to the proud position of 
being on the eve of securing recognition as the Capital 
of the New World. 

Area 

Square Miles. Population. 


1867. 24 252,054 

1873. 36 367,396 

1883. 36 629,985 

1893.180 1,438,010 


No other city in the world has such a showing. But 
when we turn to the returns of the assessments, duly 
sworn by eleven different Assessors as a full and correct 
statement of the price which the real and personal prop¬ 
erty owned by the citizens of this marvelously increasing 
city, we are staggered by the discovery that Chicago 
would, according to the oaths of these eleven responsible 
officials, sell for less to-day than she would have brought 
at a fair voluntary sale twenty years ago ! Here are the 
figures: 


Area Assessed Value. 



Sq Miles. 

Population. 

Realty. 

Personalty. 

Total. 

1867. 

. .. 24 

252,054 

$141,445,920 

153,580,924 

$195,026,844 

1873. 

... 36 

367,396 

262,969,820 

49,103,175 

312,072,995 

1883. 

... 36 

629.985 

101,596,787 

31,633,717 

133,230,504 

1893. 

. . . 180 

1,438,010 

189,299,120 

56,491,231 

245,790,351 


Therefore if we are to believe the Assessors, Chicago, 
with close up on a million and a half inhabitants and 
with 180 square miles of territory, would bring 66 mil¬ 
lions dollars less if put up to auction and sold than 
what the Chicago of 1873, wit h 01ll y 367,000 population 






211 


Dives Ike Tax Dodger. 

and 36 square miles of land, would have brought at a fair 
' voluntary sale. Such an astonishing shrinkage in value 
is even more amazing than the amazing growth of the 
population. 

Let us look at it another way. If we average it up 
we have the following remarkable results : 

Average Assessed Vaeue. 

Square Mile. Per Head. 

(Million Dollars.) (Dollars.) 


1867.8.1 , 774 

1873 .8.5 850 

1883.3.6 211 

1893.I.3 170 


At this rate, in another twenty years Chicago would 
be stone broke, and couldn’t be sold for a red cent. Yet 
these figures are all official, and not one of them was 
inscribed on the returns except over the solemn oath of 
the Assessor. In reality the value of property in Chicago 
would be underestimated at 2,000 million dollars. 

The extraordinary thing about the unaccountable drop 
in the value of Chicago real estate is that all the data 
available for estimating the value of the property in the 
city points in exactly the opposite direction. According 
to the statements of the Department of Public Works, 
there were 71,545 buildings erected in the city between 
1883 and 1892, the estimated value of which was $316,- 
857,000. But when we turn to the Assessors’ statements, 
the addition of these 71,000 houses to the real estate of 
Chicago did not raise the total value of the assessment 
more than 88 millions of dollars, even if we exclude 
from consideration all other descriptions of realty. Two 
and two do not seem to make four in the Assessors’ 
office at Chicago; for if you add 316 millions to 101 
millions the result is 189 millions. The comparison 
with other cities only brings out the same astonishing- 
contrast all the more clearly. For Chicago, while its 
assessed value has been shrinking, has not been increas¬ 
ing its debt. It has a less assessed value than any great 






212 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

city except New Orleans, and it has a smaller debt per 
head than any city, barring none. 


Statement showing the assessed value of real and personal estate 
for the last year and the population and debt of the leading cities of 
this country: 


City. 

Assessed Value. 

Popula¬ 

tion. 

Debt. 

Valuation 
per Head. 

Debt 

per Head. 

New York... 

|L933.5l8,529 

I ,9 2 3,°3 I 

1100,762,407 

$lOOO 

$ 0.52 

Brooklyn.... 

506,054,676 

1,000,000 

47,334,214 

500 

.21 

Boston. 

924,134,300 

500,000 

33,720,111 

1800 

.67 

*Philadelphia 

769,930,542 

1,046,964 

29,065,845 

750 

• 2 9 

St. Louis .... 

280,991,420 

574,5 6 9 

21,376,021 

500 

•37 

Chicago. 

245,970,351 

1,500,000 

18,431,450 

160 

. 12 

New Orleans. 

137,000,000 

265,000 

15,335,037 

500 

.60 


So much for a comparison of the totals. Now let us 
look at the full and correct returns of property assessed 
on oath at actual and the fair selling price to the best of 
the knowledge and belief of the Assessor. Take as our 
first instance the personalty of Mr. C. T. Yerkes, erst¬ 
while of a Pennsylvania penitentiary, now the street rail¬ 
way despot of Chicago, a millionaire and a resident in a 
handsomely furnished mansion at 3201 Michigan Avenue. 
Mr. Yerkes, according to the oath of the South Side 
Assessor, has got $1,000 worth of personal property in 
his residence, excluding the piano. In his stables he 
has two horses, which the Assessor values at $150 each, 
and a carriage which is assessed as high as $1,000. It is 
singular that Mr. Yerkes, who rides in a thousand dollar 
carriage, can furnish his whole house for $1,000. The 
carpets on the floor, the pictures on the walls, the plate 
on the table to ordinary eyes would seem each to be dirt 
cheap at $1,000. But the Assessor swears that to the 
best of his knowledge and belief the whole of the per¬ 
sonal property of Mr. Yerkes, excluding the piano, 
would not fetch more than $1,000 at a fair voluntary sale! 
I11 strange contrast to the beggarly value of the Yerkes’ 
household furnishings is the costly piano. It is assessed 


♦Real estate only. 














Dives the Tax Dodger . 213 

at $1,700, or nearly as much again as all the rest of-his 
furniture. 

Mr. Yerkes, however, is peculiar in possessing so val¬ 
uable a piano. I have made bold to acquire what the 
value, the assessed value, of millionaires’ pianos may be 
in Chicago. I find that, according to the sworn valua¬ 
tion of the Assessors, they average little more than $150 
apiece. That is the fair selling price according to the 
oaths of the Assessors of the instruments which are to be 
found in the drawing-rooms of Mr. Marshall Field, Mr. 
George Pullman and Mr. J. W. Doane. 

Mr. Yerkes’ horses are also much more valuable than 
those of the millionaires of Prairie Avenue. Chicago is 
one of the greatest horse markets in the world and 
South Town Assessors may be supposed to have some 
kind of an eye for horse-flesh. Hence it must surprise the 
public to learn that to the best of the knowledge and be¬ 
lief of the South Town Assessor, the carriage and riding 
horses of the millionaires would not fetch more than $20 
apiece ! Judging from their appearance in harness these 
steeds must be the cheapest in Christendom. But the 
Assessor may know that despite their fine appearance 
they are broken-winded and spavined, for he assesses 
them on his oath at only $20 sl head. Their carriages, 
also, in notable contrast to Mr. Yerkes’ thousand dollar 
chariots, could be bought, always on the sworn opinion 
of the Assessor, at $30 each. Here are a few extracts 
from the returns : 


Each Each 

Millionaire. Horses. Valued at Carriages. Valued at Piano. 

J. W. Doane. 5 $20 5 $30 $150 

Marshall Field. 6 20 6 30 150 

Marshall Field, Jr. 2 20 2 30 

G. M. Pullman.10 20 6 30 150 


The total valuation of the personalty of the million¬ 
aires is equally astonishing. Including horses, carriages, 
pianos, and everything, the following are the returns of 
the Assessors, under oath, of the personalty of some lead¬ 
ing citizens: 






214 


If Christ Came to Chicago. 

Marshall Field. $ 20,000 J. W. Doane.$10,000 

Marshall Field, Jr. 2,000 H. H. Kohlsaat.. . i,5°° 

P. D. Armour. 5,000 C. T. Yerkes. 4,000 

George M. Pullman. 12,000 Potter Palmer. 15,000 

None of these gentlemen make out their own returns. 
They prefer the unerring judgment and trained experi¬ 
ence of the Assessor. He stands between them and their 
conscience, and why should they complain if he, the 
elected representative of the citizens, should decide that 
it would be unfair to tax Mr. Marshall Field, for in¬ 
stance, upon a higher valuation than could be realized 
by the sale of the Corots and Millets and Teniers which 
are the gems of his picture gallery ? 

This is no jesting matter. It is, in plain English, a 
colossal lie, bolstered up by habitual perjury, and oper¬ 
ating to produce roguery of every kind. If it does not 
speedily go by the board, there will be very little value 
in the apparent revival of the spirit of righteousness in 
Chicago. 

It is not difficult to see how the system came into ex¬ 
istence. Like Topsy, it growed. No lunatic in Kanka¬ 
kee is quite mad enough to have invented such a laby¬ 
rinth of fraud and make-believe all of a piece. The evil 
is of comparatively recent growth. As the Comptrol¬ 
ler says : 

In 1867, under an act of that year, there was a Commissioner of 
Taxes appointed by the Mayor. He was a man selected for his 
knowledge of real estate values. His books were open to the inspec¬ 
tion of the public, and affidavits were required of tax-payers as to 
the value of their real and personal property. By act of 1st of July, 
1877, an unfortunate change took place. The city of Chicago was 
required to assess and collect its taxes in the manner provided for in 
the general revenue law. This is set forth in Art. 8 of the Revised 
Statutes, and is the system in use at present. 

The net effect of this system is that while the value of 
the property in Chicago, if it were correctly assessed, is 
nearly 2,000' millions, the officially assessed value of 
the whole state of Illinois, including Chicago, is only 
700 millions. Hempstead Washburne, when Mayor of 
Chicago, said that the Supreme Court of Illinois had de- 










Dives the Tax Dodger. 215 

elded that all property should be assessed at 33^ per 
cent of its actual value, but even this liberal standard of 
66per cent reduction would hardly bring Chicago up to 
the sum at which the whole state, including Chicago, is 
now assessed. When you begin to inquire you find that 
the city throws the blame upon the state and the state 
upon the city. If the Assessors of the city were not to 
perjure themselves, these worthy officials remark, we 
should simply be enabling the state of Illinois to run 
tax free. All the taxes would be paid by Chicago. If 
you can get all the Assessors throughout the state to as¬ 
sess full value or any regular proportion of the value, 
we might fall into line and keep our assessments up to 
the agreed standard. But at present what can we do ? 
We must do as the others do, or hand over the city to be 
knifed by the state. 

The state, however, would co-operate if Chicago were 
in earnest. The Revenue Commission, appointed by the 
joint resolution of the two Houses of the Legislature in 
1885, reported as strongly against the present system as 
any one could desire. The Commissioners’ report that the 
Assessors, although sworn to assess all property at its fair 
cash value, “are far from doing so. Real estate is gener¬ 
ally put down at one-third of its value, frequently much 
less, and personal property at a much smaller fraction. If 
there was uniformity in the reduction perhaps but little 
harm would be done ; but there is not. The Assessor, 
having forsaken the standards of the laws without guide or 
restraint except his own varying judgment, and subject 
to the pressure of importunate tax-payers, falls heavily 
downward. The practice is widely different from the 
theory. The realty of one man is assessed at one-third, 
one-half, two-tliirds, or even the full measure of the act¬ 
ual value, while that of his neighbor is assessed at one- 
sixth, one-tenth, one-twentieth, or, as was shown in one 
instance of considerable magnitude, one-twenty-fifth of its 
actual value. The owner of the one pays as his annual 
tax five or six per cent of the whole capital invested, 


216 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

while the owner of the other pays one-fourth or one-fifth 
of one per cent. Such distinctions are too invidious to 
be meekly borne.” * 

In order to understand the true significance of this 
system of tax dodging from the point of view of finan¬ 
cial pressure, it is well to remember that while the city 
of Chicago can only levy two per cent, the other taxes 
which are collected on the same assessment mount up 
to over $7.00. Broadly speaking, Chicagoans in the 
South, West and North Towns pay from $6.79 in the 
South to $7.98 in the North Town. The difference is 
due to the rate of taxation for parks and boulevards, 
which falls heaviest on the west and north. The total 
is made up of the following items which are uniform all 
over the city : 


State . 

.0.310 

County. 

.0.778 

City. 


Library . 

.0 199 

Sanitary. 

.0.500 


The other items vary. They are highest in the West 
and North. The figures for the other taxes for the West 


are as follows : 

Town.0.500 

Park.0.450 

Park Bond.0.050 

Boulevard.0.050 

New Park Survey.0.150 


Roughly speaking, the citizen of Chicago pays from 
$7 to $8 local rates and taxes for every $100 of his 
assessed value. It is therefore his constant object to cut 
down his assessment. He can not materially alter the 
rate of taxation, but he can and does reduce the assess¬ 
ment. 

If Chicago were assessed at its selling value it would 
not need to be taxed more than one dollar per hundred 
for all purposes. One dollar per hundred would yield 
almost exactly as much as $8 does to-day, for the net 
result of manipulating assessment is to reduce the real 


* Report of the Revenue Commission, Springfield, 1886 . 













Dives the Tax Dodger. 217 

value from 2,000 millions to an assessed value of 245 
millions. But in that case all would pay according 
to the value of their property, and not, as at present, upon 
the fantastic value at which they can induce the Assessor 
to perjure himself. 

In England we have no tax upon personal property; 
local rates are based upon what is called ratable value. 
This is ascertained by a calculation based upon the let¬ 
ting rental. If a house lets at $1,000 per annum it is 
rated at about $750 or $800 ; the 20 or 25 per cent being 
thrown off as an allowance for repairs, etc. When I oc¬ 
cupied my house on a repairing lease, that is to say, when 
I as tenant undertook to keep the house in repair, I was 
rated on my net rental. The system is not perfect, but as 
the rental can be ascertained from both landlord and ten¬ 
ant and the valuation is subject to independent revision 
it does not work badly on the whole. 

The result of the Chicago system is too ludicrous for 
belief if it were not so cruel and unjust as to stifle laugh¬ 
ter. It is of course absurd to blame the rich citizens 
who have been born under the system and have never 
realized their personal responsibility for what the tax-far¬ 
mer does in their name. Neither do they realize, the 
most of them, what hardship their maneuvers inflict 
upon the poor. But if they will study the comparative 
tables which I publish in the appendix, they will see 
how the system works. 

Speaking broadly, the average assessment is one-eighth 
the value of the selling value of the property. There is 
no rich man assessed at more than one-eighth. There 
are many assessed at much less. There are few poor men 
assessed at all whose assessments do not run above the 
average of 12^ per cent—of course except the poor 
Aldermen, who, with half a dozen exceptions appear to 
have no personal property at all. They have probably 
spent it all in trying to live upon their official salary of 
$3 a week. 


218 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

The curiosities of the assessments collected in the 
appendix speak for themselves. 

First and foremost be it noted liow careful the Assess¬ 
ors have been to assess lightly all those who have a pull, 
political or otherwise. Mr. Melville Stone told me that 
some years ago when he was editing the Daily News he 
was assessed at about the same as his stenographer. He 
protested and got his assessment raised, but he attributed 
his low assessment entirely to the fact that the Assessor 
hoped thereby to secure the support of the paper which 
he edited. Newspapers in Chicago have certainly, from 
this or from some other cause, a very low “fair selling 
value,” in the opinion of the Assessors. He would be a 
smart man who could equip a first-class newspaper office 
with plant, type, machinery, and so forth, for the total 
sum of the combined assessments of the Chicago press. 
The average assessment of the morning paper is about 
$15,000, about the price of a single printing machine. 
The personalty of the Dispatch is as low as $300, a very 
modest sum on which to run an evening paper. News¬ 
paper real estate is equally cheap, in the opinion of the 
Assessor. It is rath er odd to find that the Inter Ocean 
is assessed at more than double the assessment of the 
Tribune. The total value of the realty and personalty 
of the Record and Daily News is about a month’s 
profits, if common report be correct. Mr. L,awson does 
not seem to have inherited his late partner’s objection 
to low assessment. 

After the newspapers, the Aldermen are most influential 
in Chicago. They are hopelessly impecunious—accord¬ 
ing to the Assessor. Mr. Madden, Chairman of the 
Finance Committee, is not assessed at one red cent. Mr. 
Mann, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has only 
$100 of personalty. It is an extraordinary illustration 
of the way in which Chicago is governed, that the 
control of the city revenues, which amount to almost 
exactly the total value of all the gold mined in the 
United States in a twelvemonth, should be vested in 


219 


Dives the Tax Dodger. 

tlie hands of sixty-eight Aldermen, of whom fifty-five 
have no personal property at all and the remainder only 
own, in the opinion of the Assessor, sufficient personal 
property to fetch $1,550 if they were sold at auction. 

The millionaires—but stop, there are no millionaires 
in Chicago, according to the Assessors. No one pays 
taxes on a million. The personal property and the real 
estate combined do not in any single instance amount 
to that sum. There is no tax roll compiled by the 
Assessor so as to show at a glance what each tax-payer 
is assessed at. The real estate of a millionaire is scat¬ 
tered around to such an extent that it is difficult to 
ascertain how much he is really assessed at. But if we 
take their personalty and the cost of their residences it 
is astounding how cheaply they are housed and how 
economically they furnish their palaces. The Chicago 
millionaire drives blooded horses which the Assessor 
does not think would sell for more than $20 cash, if he 
lives on the South Side, but on the North Side they aver¬ 
age $50. Their carriages also vary in cost from $30 to 
$100 according to the district in which they are assessed. 
Their pianos also come cheap—from $50 to $180; and 
one of them, Mr. McCormick, has actually got three 
watches, worth, on an average, $33^3 each. 

The list abounds in strange contrasts. Who, for in¬ 
stance, could have imagined that Carrie Watson down 
Clark Street had four times as much personalty as Mr. 
John R. Walsh, President of the Chicago National 
Bank, chief proprietor of the Herald , and head of the 
Western News Co.? Such, however, is the fact, according 
to the sworn information of the Assessor. Carrie Watson’s 
personalty is $4,000; Mr. John R. Walsh’s only $1,000. 
Whatever Carrie Watson’s failings may be in other 
respects, she seems to do her duty as a tax-payer 
better than many other people who would not touch her 
polluted fingers. I had heard that she lived in style and 
had amassed considerable wealth, but I did not expect 
to find that with the exception of Mr. Yerkes she owned 


220 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

the finest horses in the city. She has four assessed at 
$125 each. Mr. Yerkes has only two, but they average 
$150 apiece. If Mr. Yerkes beats her in horse-flesh, 
she leaves Mr. Marshall Field far behind in carriages. 
The multi-millionaire modestly rides to town in a $30 
chariot, whereas nothing less than two $350 coaches will 
suffice for Madame. Mr. Medill, poor man, can only in¬ 
dulge one piano valued at $100, whereas Carrie Watson 
has two, each of which is assessed at $150. 

Speaking generally, the total personalty of million¬ 
aires is assessed at about the sum necessary to furnish a 
single room in their palaces, and that by no means the 
best. The jewelry worn by some ladies at an evening 
party far exceeds the total value of the whole assessment 
of their personalty. Mrs. William Astor is said occa¬ 
sionally to dazzle New York society by appearing 
plastered with diamonds valued at a million dollars, 
There are fortunately no such peripatetic jewelers’ show 
cases in Chicago, but more than one lady in Chicago, 
could sell her jewels for more than the entire assessed 
personalty of the Prairie Avenue fraternity. 

The contrasts between the assessments of the immense 
business buildings and those of humble stores, upon 
which the Chicago Times lays such stress, is notable 
enough to need no comment. Much of this may be ex¬ 
plained by the fact that, as a wealthy man remarked the 
other day, “ I buy my taxes cheap as I buy everything 
else.” When we find the Auditorium assessed at just 
about the sum which it cost to fit it with radiators, it is 
not marvelous that people shrug their shoulders. What 
can we think also of the assessing of the Plaza, a seven- 
story building at the southeast corner of Clark Street 
and North Avenue, at $10,000 in 1892, when the pur¬ 
chase money of the ground on which it stands was 
$95,000? The premises as they stand are estimated as 
being worth well-nigh a million. But even now they 
are only assessed at $30,000, an increase of $20,000 since 


221 


Dives the Tax Dodger. 

the previous year. The assessment lists are full of simi¬ 
lar scandals, but few are quite so gross as this. 

If the evil were confined to rich people it would be 
bad enough. But there is just as much discrimination 
or indiscrimination between the poor and the poor as 
betweed the rich and the poor. The canker of corrup¬ 
tion has eaten through and through the whole social 
system. 

The Assessor, who having forsaken the standards of the 
law, says the report is without guide or restraint, except 
his own judgment and the pressure of the importunate 
taxpayers. This is a euphemism for saying that the As¬ 
sessor is without any guide excepting his own interests as 
they are influenced by Dives the Tax Dodger. The place of 
Assessor is not worth very much if it is estimated by the 
value of the legal salary, but every one knows that in 
Chicago an assessorship is the shortest cut to fortune. 
As Roman Emperors were wont to give their favorites 
consulships in a fat province, in order that they might 
replenish fortunes wasted in gambling and debauch, 
so the political system in Chicago distributes as- 
sessorships as plums to politicians who have deserved 
well of their party. Assessors are not bribed in the 
same way in which Aldermen are corrupted, but al¬ 
though the method varies, the end in the long run is 
arrived at all the same. The representative of the peo¬ 
ple uses his position of trust in order to cheat the people 
and feather his own nest. That is all there is of it, take 
it as you please. Sometimes the Assessor is bribed by 
liberal subscriptions to his election fund, the balance of 
which goes into the Assessor’s pocket. At other times 
the matter is arranged in hard cash, either between the 
tax-farmer and the Assessor, and sometimes between the 
individual citizen and the man who can fine him to 
three or four times as much taxes as are being paid by 
his neighbor or who can cut down his estimate to next to 
nothing. An anecdote was told me of an Assessor who, 
calling upon a cobbler in one of the towns of Chicago for 


222 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

the purpose of fixing his assessment, asked significantly, 
how mnch a first-class pair of boots would cost for him. 
The cobbler’s honesty wilted under the temptation, and he 
replied, as any luckless Christian would do whose goods 
a pasha or kaimakan had taken a fancy to in Macedonia 
or Armenia, that to him the boots would cost very little. 
As a matter of fact the boots were given, and if the 
assessment was not reduced it certainly was not raised. 

An Assessor, no doubt, when he leaves office marvels 
at his own moderation. He has practically carte blanche 
to steal where he pleases, nor is there any possibility of 
any check upon his corruption provided he acts with 
ordinary caution. Here, for instance, is a case in point. 
Mr. Washington Hesing, present Postmaster of Chicago, 
mentioned the following instance of the kind of plunder 
that goes on. Speaking of Assessors suddenly becoming 
rich, Mr. Hesing said : 

There is Chase, who was Assessor on the North Side. A few years 
ago a friend of mine came to me, and with him was Chase. My 
friend said : ‘ ‘ Mr. Hesing, this man is Mr. Chase. He is poor and has 
nothing to do. He wants to be Assessor in the North Town. The 
salary is only $ 1,500 a year, but that will keep Chase and his family 
from starving. Will you help him get the office ? ” 

Chase got the position all right, held it either four or five years, and 
went out of the office rich. 

I make no comment on this at all. I don’t need to do so. I just 
simply state these facts : Chase went into the office penniless. He 
held it either four or five years, drawing a salary of $ 1,500 a year, and 
came out of it wealthy. He built himself a handsome and costly 
house on Vernon Avenue. Where did he get his money ? 

So well recognized is it in the town that assessments 
are fraudulent, and it is considered perfectly legitimate 
to resort to any expedient to avoid taxation. Of course 
in this kind of a game, the rich, and especially the cor¬ 
porations which have no souls to be damned or bodies 
to be kicked, play a leading part. The law is the poor 
man’s friend. Civilization consists, as I am constantly 
saying, in the substitution of the law for the arbitrary 
caprice of an individual. Civilization means the protec¬ 
tion of the weak against the rapine of the strong. The 
strong and the rich can always hold their own under an- 


223 


Dives the Tax Dodger, 

archy. Under a system in which might is right, there is 
no law save only the will of him that is strong ; the poor 
and weak go to the wall. That is just what happens in 
Chicago where civilization has still to penetrate many of 
the departments of the city administration. The very 
poor in Chicago do not pay taxes at all. They are ex¬ 
cused on account of their poverty. The very rich, at the 
other end of the social scale, do their best to approximate 
to the condition of the very poor by reducing their assess¬ 
ments to a minimum. The burden of taxes, therefore, 
falls on the middle classes. The middle class man is not 
wealthy enough or powerful enough to employ tax-farm¬ 
ers to reduce his assessment. 

I shrink from using language which would be ade¬ 
quate to describe the injustice of this proceeding. 
Fortunately there is no need for me to say what I think, 
seeing that my sentiments and those of every person who 
looks on this subject from the outside have been ex¬ 
pressed with sufficient emphasis by Postmaster Washing¬ 
ton Hesing in an interview published by the Chicago 
Times. Mr. Hesing’s official position and his familiar¬ 
ity with the facts of which he speaks give great author¬ 
ity to the following scathing indictment of the tax sys¬ 
tem of Chicago: 

There is not a large corporation in the city of Chicago that is pay¬ 
ing taxes on over one-tenth of the real value of its property. It is the 
greatest outrage on a municipality ever perpetrated. The poor men 
of Chicago pay the bulk of the taxes and it grinds them and galls 
them to do it. Some of them get to thinking about it and once in a 
while you’ll hear of a man declaring himself an Anarchist. No won¬ 
der. Can any one blame him ? 

The lowness of Chicago’s tax list is the result of the most villain¬ 
ous bribery and perjury. It is enough to make honest, decent people 
boil with indignation to hear the naked facts. The property of a big 
corporation is never assessed for more than one-tenth of its real value. 
Here, for example, is a syndicate owning a big building. The prop¬ 
erty is worth a couple of millions. At a forced sale it would bring in 
the neighborhood of $ 1,200,000. That is the figure it should be as¬ 
sessed at. But it never is. It goes on the Assessor’s book at about 
$125,000. The Assessor and his go-between pocket their bribes and go 
out on Blue Island Avenue or Clybourti Avenue and find a poor man— 
a small shop keeper—owning a little place worth $2,000. He pays 
taxes on $1,500. There is a great merchant in this town. I will not 


224 


If Christ Came to Chicago. 

mention his name ; everybody knows who I mean. His place was 
burned out once and he produced fire insurance policies for between 
$950,000 and $1,000,000. He got the money, I presume. At least the 
companies never made any public objection to paying. That insur¬ 
ance was on his stock—that is to say, chattels—which is taxable. 
When I heard about it I sent a man over to the Assessor’s office, and 
I declare to you that a member of the firm had sworn that the stock 
was worth $72,000, and that was what they were paying taxes on. 

The rank dishonesty of the Assessor amazes me. I don’t see how 
a man can accept bribes, flagrantly disobey the law, and escape un¬ 
scathed. The Assessor, however, always tries to cover up his tracks 
and works behind another man. To show how these persons operate 
let me tell of a case that was brought to my attention. There is a 
business man in this town whose taxes amounted to $1,500. He was 
going to pay that sum without a kick. One day a man went to him 
and said: “Your taxes are $1,500. I can get them cut to $750. 
What will you give me if I do this? ” After some talk the business 
man agreed to give $400. His taxes were reduced and he saved $350. 
The city was cheated out of $750. That is only one case. There are 
scores of others. Of the $400 bribe the Assessor got $200 and his 
agent $200. 

There are men in the city of Chicago whose business it is to swear 
to lies, to perjure themselves. A merchant does not like the idea of 
going on record as a perjurer. So he says to one of these profes¬ 
sionals: “Here, I am going out of town. You fix up my taxes. 
Make the amount so much,” naming the small sum on which he wants 
to be assessed. The perjurer does this and gets his price. 

Whatever is done, the present infamous system should go. It 
forces men of little means to bear the burden ; it takes but a trifle 
from the rich ; it results in bribery ; it causes perjury ; it is outrageous. 
Tet it be wiped out, and that without delay. 

Mr. Hesing went on to describe how his efforts to se¬ 
cure an adequate assessment of his own property utterly 
failed. He protested against a building in which he 
was interested being assessed as being worth a little more 
than its annual rental, but it was in vain. Mr. Hesing’s 
house, for which he would not take $40,000, was assessed 
for $3,637. He owns land in Ravenswood that is worth 
$80 a foot, and is assessed for a mere bagatelle which 
would hardly pay for putting up a fence around it. It 
is very seldom, however, that the tax-payer manifests 
an eager desire to be assessed at his full value. They 
take the goods the gods provide them and they do not care 
to look a gift horse too close in the mouth. They secure 
themselves on the ground that these things form part of 
a wrong system and that they ought not to make martyrs 


225 


Dives the. Tax Dodger. 

of themselves in changing- it. What they forget is that 
they might at least make voters of themselves in order to 
improve it, hut that is what they heretofore do not seem 
to have taken into consideration. So the rotten system 
goes on. How it works out may be seen from these 
fragmentary examples given in this chapter. Those 
who care for further information will find in the appendix 
a list of many of the wealthiest people in Chicago 
together with some samples of the way in which the 
property of the smaller tradesmen and the lower and 
middle class is assessed. 

The reform of the assessment system can only be ef¬ 
fected by action at Springfield through the State Legis¬ 
lature, and this brings us to another difficulty. A 
leading citizen and universally respected ex-official of 
the city administration said frankly that he despaired of 
doing anything because “ there are too many in it,” to 
use his own words, for any measure of reform to be 
carried through the Legislature at Springfield. He said: 
“Our Aldermen are bad enough, and cannot be said to be 
ideal representatives of the city; but they are gentlemen 
compared with the creatures whom we send to represent 
us in the Legislature of the State of Illinois. Hence, 
even if you were to reform the City Council of Chicago 
and get them unanimously to indorse a bill reforming 
the assessment system, it would have no chance at 
Springfield. The rich, who at the present moment 
escape their fair share of the burdens of the city, would 
simply go down to Springfield and buy up the Legisla¬ 
ture. Congressmen are not only a more disreputable lot 
than the Aldermen, but their price is much lower. You 
can buy up the Legislature of Illinois at much less per 
head than you can the City Council of Chicago. It is 
ludicrous, if it were not a matter for indignation, to see 
the kind of men who are considered fit and proper per¬ 
sons to represent this great city in the Legislature of the 
State. I remember some time ago I had a young man 
who was a pretty fair clerk in my office, a man of no 


226 If Christ Came to Chicago . 

special capacity, who was earning fair wages but who was 
totally destitute of any training that would qualify him 
as a legislator. One fine day I was told that he was 
listening to the proposals which were being made to him 
for standing for Congress as a representative of one of 
the wards of the city. I sent for him and begged him 
to dismiss such nonsense from his head. 1 You cannot 
make an honest living at Springfield,’ I said, ‘ neither 
can you continue to earn a salary as a clerk in my 
office if you are attending to your legislative duties in 
another place. Besides you know you are quite unfit 
for the post. You cannot write the introduction to any 
bill which might be introduced, to save your life. Drop 
all that and stick to your business.’ He hung his head 
and looked ashamed, but then picking up courage he 
said that he would try, because if he did not get it some 
other d— fool would. He did get elected and went to 
Congress. He became as corrupt as any of the boodlers 
there and as corrupt personally as he was politically. His 
moral character went, he took to drinking and now he 
lies in a drunkard s grave. He is one among many who 
have gone down to destruction because our Legislature, 
even more than our City Council, is a sink of iniquity. 
What are you going to do against such a state of things 
as this ? ” 

“ Well,” I replied, “ there is more work to be done 
than I at first realized, but it will be done all the same. ” 

I can only say that for my own part I marvel with 
exceeding great wonderment that a system so rotten 
and so unjust could be allowed to continue for a 
quarter of a century in the midst of a nominally Chris¬ 
tian community. In England we have been accus¬ 
tomed to consider that Americans as a race are fond of 
liberty, with a keen sense of justice and an inveterate 
impatience with injustice when it takes the form of 
taxes. I am afraid I shall return to my own land 
with a very different conception of American citizens. 
The men who threw tlie tea into the bay at Boston 


Dives the Tax Dodger . 227 

and severed the tie which linked the American colonies 
to the mother country have left few descendants among 
the citizens of Chicago. The amount of taxes in dispute 
which lost us this continent was only $400,000 a year. 
Many times that sum is every year unjustly shifted by 
the wealthy tax-dodgers of Chicago from their own 
shoulders to those of their poorer neighbors, and no one 
seems to care. Yet the number of tax-dodgers is com¬ 
paratively few. They could be snowed under at any 
election by majorities of at least ten to one, but this 
meek and patient majority has gone on year after year, 
suffering without protest a system of taxation compared 
with which that of George III was ideally just. There 
has been no tea thrown into the harbor in Chicago ; there 
has hardly been an articulate protest against a system of 
spoliation which admittedly robs the poor to enrich the 
wealthy. 

I read in the Chicago Times the statement that “the Chi¬ 
cago system of taxation is systematized crime against the 
poor; that for twenty years the burden of taxation has 
rested upon the poor and that it is the history of tax- 
dodging, discrimination, bribing and perjury, written 
upon every page of the tax books of Cook County. The 
trusts, the corporations, the millionaires of Chicago pay 
taxes on less than one-tenth of the value of their enor¬ 
mous accumulations of wealth, while the small property 
owners are being taxed on from one-half to one-third of 
the value of their humble possessions. The millions 
belonging to the rich are sheltered by bribery and per¬ 
jury from paying tribute, while the humble homes of the 
poor have no protection.” Yet, although these facts are 
undenied and have been in the possession of the public 
for years and are no worse to-day than they have been 
any time since 1880, there is no agitation, no protest, no 
revolt. Here and there in a few obscure corners a few 
Socialists are organizing, and in still more obscure cor¬ 
ners the Anarchists are muttering threats and perhaps 
dreaming of dynamite, but for any trace of an out- 


228 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

burst of healthy indignation which such facts should 
elicit in any self-respecting community, I have looked 
in vain. The Chicago tax-payer may have the meek¬ 
ness of the sheep and the patience of the ass, but he 
can hardly be said to have the independence and self- 
respect of a human being or the public spirit of an 
American citizen. 

But human nature being human nature all the world 
over, even in Chicago, and the stock of patience and for¬ 
bearance under spoliation and plunder being a limited 
quantity, the time of its exhaustion must be drawing 
near. I have had some little experience of agitation in 
the Old World and I must say that I never nave seen a 
condition of things in an English-speaking land where 
the signs point unmistakably to change, and it may be to 
violent change. Evils often exist which are keenly felt 
but whose origin and source is so obscure that it is 
almost impossible for the sufferers to place their finger 
on the cause of their trouble, nor do they know how to 
redress it. In Chicago for the first time I have found a sys¬ 
tem of taxation admittedly unjust, undeniably and palpa¬ 
bly based upon corruption, maintained for the benefit of 
a handful of persons, none of whom dare defend in the 
light of day what they are doing in secret; and we 
have the facts officially certified by the chief authorities 
in the city. Successive Mayors and Comptrollers have 
placed on record so that no street sweeper could mistake 
their meaning, their deliberate judgment that Dives is a 
tax-dodger and that he is now and has been for years 
thrusting the burden which he should have carried upon 
the shoulders of Lazarus. Here, for instance, is a pas¬ 
sage from the last report of Comptroller Ackerman: 

There appears to be a general disposition to escape this form of tax¬ 
ation, and evasion and misrepresentation appear to be almost the rule. 
It is notorious that many instances occur every year in which em¬ 
inently reputable citizens have made returns equal to about one-fiftieth 
and in some cases one-hundredth part of the value of their personal 
estate. The whole system is demoralizing in its effects from begin¬ 
ning to end and should be remedied by such legislative action as will 


Dives the Tax Dodger . 229 

enable the officers of the city to have complete and entire control of 
its resources. 

Changes indeed ! But what sign is there of its being 
changed at the present moment? Even a worm will 
turn, but the poorer tax-payers of Chicago seem not even 
to have the spirit of a worm ; they are rather like 
caterpillars, bruised and mangled beneath the gardener’s 
spade, without even strength to crawl or resolution to 
bestir themselves to remedy their miserable condition. 
Even the loss of the beloved dollar fails to nerve them 
to action. Possibly the tax-dodger knows his neighbor 
and assumes upon his apathy and indifference; but he 
will do well to remember that this assumption is the in¬ 
fallible mistake of all tyrants and oppressors in all lands. 
They think that the injustice by which they profit will 
last their time and after that may come the deluge. But 
sometimes the deluge does not wait until they quit the 
scene. George the Third made that mistake, among 
others, with the result that the English-speaking race 
was reft in twain, and Britain lost her empire in the 
New World, owing to a dispute about a less sum than 
that annually plundered from the poor by the tax-dodg¬ 
ers of Chicago. There is a grim saying in the Old Book 
which may be commended to the gentlemen who are 
skulking, ashamed but resolute, in their trenches of the 
assessment system: ‘ ‘ Rob not the poor because he is 

poor, neither oppress the afflicted in the gate, for the 
Lord will plead their cause and spoil the soul of those 
that spoil them.” And there is another like unto it: 
“ their feet shall slide in due time.” 


CHAPTER IV. 

GAMBLING AND PARTY FINANCE. 

Every city in Europe, with one exception, Monte 
Carlo, which is not a city, has put down public gaming 
hells. They flourished in other places until 1870, but 
when reunited Germany smote down the French Empire 
and unified the Fatherland, the clink of roulette was 
heard no more in Homburg and the other German 
watering places, for the croupier went out as the 
Kaiser came in. 

There is plenty of gambling in England, but the 
European conscience has decided apparently once for all 
that gaming hells are not institutions for civilization to 
tolerate. This would also seem to be the opinion of the 
Legislature of the State of Illinois, and the same doctrine 
has received the approval of the City Council of Chicago. 
Nevertheless, so far from this having brought Chicago up 
to the moral level of the most immoral European city, 
the contrary is the case. The gaming hell open and un¬ 
ashamed is one of the indigenous institutions of Chicago. 

The love of gambling is almost as deep-seated in the 
human nature as the animal appetite on which the race 
depends for its preservation and multiplication. The 
craving for excitement; the longing to be suddenly rich 
without exertion or expenditure, are too deeply seated to 
be expunged by municipal ordinances or statutes of the 
Legislature. 

Gambling seems to come to most men as naturally as 
lying, and therefore it is claimed by some it is best to 
place no obstacle in the way of this strong, inherited 
and natural propensity. Common sense would seem to 
point in exactly the opposite direction. One does not 
need to be a moralist to admit that the gaming table is 


231 


232 If Christ Came to Chicago . 

not an institution which makes for righteousness in a 
community. That would not be maintained by anyone, 
least of all by its habitues, of which in this city, it is said, 
there are about 5,000. If, therefore, it be regarded as an 
object of sound policy to minimize any evil which can¬ 
not be annihilated, the object of the administration must 
be to compel those who gamble to do it as much out of 
sight as possible, in order that the temptation and fasci¬ 
nation of the pursuit may be kept out of the minds of 
others. Because it conduces to unrighteousness, the 
public gaming hell has been suppressed everywhere in 
the Old World, and it is not likely that any new argu¬ 
ments can be discovered in Chicago to justify a contrary 
policy from a moral point of view. The defense, if 
defense there be, must be based on other than moral 
considerations. At the same time, while regretting that 
Chicago should deliberately adopt a lower moral standard 
in relation to gaming hells than any European city, there 
is no ground for Pliariaism 011 the part of European 
critics. 

The great gaming hell of England is the race course, 
and I have never been able to understand the nicety of 
the distinction which damned the gaming table and 
upholds the race course. Everything is strongly in favor 
of roulette and unloaded dice as against the gambling 
machines used not on the green table, but on the green 
turf of the race track. Monte Carlo is a fair play its- 
self compared with the betting ring. Nothing can be 
more odious than the way in which some English news¬ 
papers which derive much of their circulation and profit 
from pandering to the race course, hold up their hands 
in holy horror against the Prince of Monaco for drawing 
a handsome revenue from the gaming tables of Monte 
Carlo. At the same time while we recognize that the 
race track is worse than the gambling hell we need not 
sanction both evils because one is less than the other, 
and refuse to do one good thing because we cannot do 


Gambling and Party Finance. 233 

two. This is an absurd policy which should be left 
strictly to the party of temperance, falsely so-called. 

The peculiarity about the Chicago plan of dealing 
with the gambling hells is not that the houses are 
allowed to run; anybody could allow houses to run, if 
they were prepared to take the moral responsibility of 
allowing pitfalls or temptations to be opened up before 
the feet of citizens. That which is peculiar about Chi¬ 
cago is the way in which gaming is utilized as an en¬ 
gine of party finance. Chicago taught the world how to 
make the dice box and the wheel of fortune and the pack 
of cards a resource of partisan finance. It is ingenious 
and immoral. It is simply the adoption by the Mayor of 
the city of the methods and morals of the policeman 
who levies blackmail on the street walkers on his beat. 
Between the blackmailing Mayor and the blackmailing 
policeman there is not a pin to choose, except the man 
in the high position is much more to be condemned than 
his poorer and humbler fellow citizen. The principle in 
both cases is exactly the same. The gaming house has 
no more right to exist in Chicago than the woman has to 
solicit vice in the public streets. The law against gaming 
houses is much more precise and more emphatic than 
that which forbids solicitation. It is inconvenient 
for the policeman to be perpetually arresting street 
walkers, and it is much more agreeable for him to make 
a deal with her in consideration of which he lines his 
pocket and she is left uninterrupted to pursue her voca¬ 
tion. The same argument precisely led the late Carter 
Harrison to conclude the famous deal with the gamblers’ 
syndicate, which brought in so golden a harvest. Of 
course, if anybody asks for proof that any particular 
policeman took blackmail, the proof is not forthcoming. 
There was the same universal conviction as to the nature 
of the bargain which was struck between Carter Harri¬ 
son, as Mayor of Chicago, and the gambling fraternity, 
but the evidence which should be produced in a court 
of law is not forthcoming. 


234 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

A Mayor can on an occasion be as discreet as a bood- 
ling Alderman, and they usually console their con¬ 
sciences by reflecting that, after all, the money is not 
used by them for their own private needs; it is a contri¬ 
bution to the expense of getting elected and a safe 
financial expedient for recuperating the party war chest 
for the lavish outlay of dollars which a contested elec¬ 
tion will cost. 

The way in which it was done, according to the story 
circulated everywhere in Chicago, is as follows: 

Before Carter Harrison’s last election, a certain num¬ 
ber of the gamblers, as is the custom in this city, made 
up a purse and subscribed several thousands of dollars 
(authorities differ as to the precise amount) to Mr. Har¬ 
rison’s election fund. When he was elected he took 
steps to recoup those patriots who had supplied him with 
the sinews of war. A small syndicate was formed for 
the purpose of securing a certain liberal percentage of 
the profits on gaming, and in return practical immunity 
from prosecution was secured to the gaming houses 
by the arrangement with the Mayor. How large that 
percentage was has never been definitely settled, but re¬ 
ports put it as much as 65 per cent. A certain well- 
known citizen who was trusted by the Mayor was 
at the head of the syndicate, and in that capacity he be¬ 
came the favored shepherd of all the gamblers in town. 
In dealing with the gaming houses he had practically a 
free hand. Whom he would he slew; whom he would not, 
he kept alive. That is the theory ; but in practice it was 
found that the houses that were shut were those which 
had not agreed to pay the stipulated percentage while 
those who punctually paid up their dues to the gambling 
shepherd were allowed to run free. This sum, which 
amounted during the World’s Fair, in some districts, to 
a colossal fortune, was divided. Many people had a 
finger in the pie before the residue reached Mr. Harrison. 
But how ever many there were who fingered the profit en- 
route, there was enough left to make it well worth the 


235 


Gambling and Party Finance . 

Mayor’s while to allow the houses to run. This ar¬ 
rangement was in full force when Carter Harrison 
was shot, and the houses continued running all the in¬ 
terregnum. Everyone in Chicago knew perfectly well 
that they were running; there was no attempt at con¬ 
cealment. They were all in existence and prospered 
under the protection of the administration. One of the 
most famous hells was running immediately over the 
saloon of Alderman Powers. 

A Grand Jury last autumn suddenly struck evidence 
as to the existence of gaming houses. They asked the 
police why they were not suppressing them, the 
patrolmen declared under oath that gambling was run¬ 
ning wide open in the city by the consent and under 
the protection of the authorities, with an occasional 
exception where the parties were not in sufficiently 
good standing to obtain a permit. They were reminded 
that each one of them was commanded by law to close 
up each gaming house and seize and prosecute the 
gamblers. They replied that their hands were tied by 
their superior officers, and that no houses were closed 
without special and direct orders from these superior 
officers. The Grand Jury summoned the Chief of Po¬ 
lice. Of course he knew nothing about it; the duty 
of closing the gaming houses was left, he said, to the 
patrolmen. The Grand Jury thereby reported that 
the conflict of evidence led its members to the con¬ 
clusion that there was collusion between the police 
force of the city and the gamblers so general and wide 
that its devil-fish tentacles reached over a large por¬ 
tion of the police force. Of course everyone who read 
this laughed at the innocence of the Grand Jury, 
and wondered how long after the deluge begun these 
worthy souls would discover that it looked like rain, 
and prepare to unfurl their umbrellas. The Grand 
Jury, however, at least established the fact beyond all 
doubt or gainsay that gambling was running wide open 
by the consent and under the protection of the authori- 


236 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

ties in direct contravention both of municipal ordinances 
and the laws of the state of Illinois. Although this fact 
was thus officially brought before the Chief of the force 
and acting Mayor, nothing was done. The gaming 
houses were crowded every night, and at the dinner hour 
by the dinner-pail brigade, just as they always had been; 
and the gambling syndicate collected their share of the 
gaming receipts, and, it is hoped, handed over the due 
proportion to their heirs and representatives of those 
who had arranged the deal. So matters remained until 
the election of Mr. Hopkins. 

Nothing was said on the subject either by the Repub¬ 
licans or Democrats in the mayoral campaign. The 
Republicans were too busy discussing the city’s financial 
situation and the infamy of the Queen of the Sandwich 
Islands. The Democrats laid low and said nothing for 
reasons of their own. Gamblers, acting in accordance 
with their usual sagacity, put up large sums of money 
(the exact amount is again uncertain) for campaign pur¬ 
poses. A leading Democrat on the West Side told me that 
Mr. Hopkins, who was receiver of the Chemical National 
Bank, noticed, with some curiosity, a heavy check paid 
into the Republican campaign fund by some leading gam¬ 
blers of the South Side. He immediately ordered all 
checks from the same source to be sent to him for exami¬ 
nation, and as a result of this scrutiny he came to the 
conclusion that the gamblers were putting more money 
upon Mr. Swift than they were 011 Mr. Hopkins. There¬ 
fore the Mayor, who is quick to resent an injury and slow 
to forgive a slight, is said to have marked down those 
gamblers for condign punishment. He said nothing, how¬ 
ever, and when the election was over he still kept his 
silence, until one fine day, early in January, the Rev. 
O. P. Gifford and a gambler, by name Ficklen, waited 
upon the Mayor and asked him what he proposed to do 
about the gaming houses. Mr. Gifford had previously 
made a radical speech at Willard Hall, in which he de¬ 
clared he and other ministers were determined to put 


237 


Gambling and Party Finance. 

the law into motion against gambling hells or perish on 
the threshold. His first move was to take counsel with 
the Mayor. He reported when he came out that he was 
more than satisfied with his visit. He (the Mayor) told 
Mr. Gifford he considered gambling an evil which could 
not be suppressed in a city of this size, though he thought 
it could be regulated, and he assured Mr. Gifford of his 
hearty sympathy in every effort he might make to ex¬ 
terminate open gambling in Chicago. This was on the 
fifth of January. The same day he summoned Chief 
Brennan and as a result orders were issued the next day 
ordering all the police to close the gambling houses in 
the city. The next Saturday night every gaming hell 
was closed up tight. On the next Monday, the follow¬ 
ing interview appeared in the Chicago papers: 

The Mayor expressed some surprise when questioned concerning 
the order. 

“ Who told you the gambling houses had been closed ? ” 

His honor was informed that the information had come direct 
from Chief Brennan’s office. 

“Well,” remarked the Mayor, “ I don’t know anything about any 
order on the subject. But I do not issue instructions to my depart¬ 
ment chiefs. I presume Chief Brennan can tell you all that is to be 
told about closing the gambling houses. I think it not improbable,” 
the Mayor continued, looking very grave meanwhile, “ that the closing 
is entirely voluntary on the part of the gamblers. I understand they 
have been complaining about the hard times. Then within the past 
few weeks two of these gambling houses have been robbed. I am in¬ 
formed that Chief Brennan is talking of reducing the police force. In 
view of these things, it is possible that the gamblers fear they will not 
have adequate police protection hereafter, and have concluded to go 
out of business. This is only a suggestion, however, which I offer for 
what it is worth.” 

Chief Brennan was appealed to. 

“Does the order include all gambling houses ? ” 

“All gambling houses.” 

“For good ?” 

“For good.” 

“All forms of gambling ? ” 

“All forms of gambling—gambling houses, crap games, pool 
rooms.” 

“They will not be allowed to reopen under certain promises, 
then ? ” 

“They will not. The pool rooms of the city were closed on my or¬ 
ders after I had conferred with the Mayor on the matter. They will 
remain closed if it takes the entire police force to do it.” 


238 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

From this it will be seen that the Mayor in addition 
to his other gifts possesses a broad sense of humor. It 
also shows that the actors in the little comedy had not 
arranged their parts with sufficient care; otherwise the 
Mayor would hardly have expressed surprise at the ac¬ 
tion of the Chief of Police and disclaimed all responsi¬ 
bility for what he was doing, at the very moment when 
the Chief in question was declaring that the gaming 
houses were closed after he had conferred with the Mayor 
on the matter. 

Another reporter declared that the Mayor had said if 
anyone could find an order of his closing the houses he 
would give them a new suit of clothes. The Inter Ocean 
in announcing the closing of the houses embodied the 
general conviction of the gamblers themselves in the 
following u Scare heads : ” 

Not on the square ! Gambling houses are ordered to suspend 
operations ! It is only a blind ! Done for the purpose of concen¬ 
trating the privilege to rob ! Houses will open again as soon as those 
under the ban are driven out! 

“We shall all be open again in a week,” was the 
opinion of most of the professionals; but they began to 
look rather blue when a week passed and no permission 
was received. They began to fear that the Mayor, after 
all, might really be in earnest. After a time they decided 
to give him a hint. To remind him of his dependence 
upon the gamblers they made it hot for him by an elec¬ 
tion petition. The petition called attention to the 
various irregularities which had taken place in the con¬ 
test which had resulted in the return of Mr. Hopkins 
and compelled him thereby to defend his seat. This led 
to Mr. Hopkins’ second declaration on the subject of gam¬ 
bling, from which it may be seen plainly enough that he 
regarded the whole question from the point of view of the 
politician and not from that of the moralist. When asked 
about the current rumor about the petition he said: “ You 
can say this: no gambler who spends his money in fight¬ 
ing me in this contest will open his place while I am 


239 


Gambling and Party Finance. 

Mayor. I may not be able to stop gambling entirely, 
but I will be able to stop these men from running open 
houses.” This was on the 23d, the houses having been 
closed for more than a fortnight. The papers, which at 
first had been very dubious about the Mayor’s will or 
power to close the gaming houses, now declared that 
gambling could be suppressed, and had been suppressed, 
and must continue to be suppressed. Judging from the 
utterances of the Chicago newspapers there was nobody 
in the town who wished gambling to continue. Mean¬ 
while some of the gamblers who had been through simi¬ 
lar experiences smiled audibly.* 

Then one or two of the papers announced that the 
Mayor was going to weaken on the policy of restriction. 
The 25th of January a gaming house proprietor stated 
that the Mayor had owned himself beaten: that the 
gaming houses would all be running full blast as soon 
as they could get their rooms in order. “ He (Mayor 
Hopkins) has been driven to toleration by stress 
of circumstances. He has thrown up both hands and 
confessed his failure. I am willing to give him credit 
for a conscientious attempt to suppress the gaming 
tables, but, like everybody else who ever tried it, he has 
found his efforts futile. He has been successful in 
exterminating the downtown gambling houses for the 
time being, and what is the result? Simply that the 
fever has broken out all over the body corporate. There 
are small games all over the city and invariably will be 
as long as the legitimate outlet for the disease is closed. 

*The gambling houses should not be permitted to reopen under the pretense that 
they are to be “regulated.” There can be no “regulation” ofthat which is plainly 
illegal and which is overwhelmingly condemned by the best public sentiment. I v et 
the gambling houses remain closed throughout Mayor Hopkins’ term.— Herald. 

Mayor Hopkins’ first step toward the “regulation” of gambling is to close up 
their places. The next logical step is to cause the arrest and prompt conviction of 
the gamblers as common vagrants, “The laws will be enforced.” That seems to 
cover the case.— Times. 

The recent onslaught of Chief Brennan has afforded ample proof that gambling 
can be suppressed if the authorities wish to suppress it —Record.. 

If the police mean business, they will swear out warrants, they will raid the 
gambling houses, will smash the implements, and prosecute all the offenders they 
catch. If that policy is pursued the establishments which where warned Saturday 
can be kept closed permanently. There will not be the least difficulty about it. 
— Tribune. 



240 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

From various and sundry quarters complaints have been 
lodged with the police that residents were annoyed in 
their homes by the proximity of gambling houses. ” 

The same paper which published this statement 
reported that the Mayor declared that he had stopped 
open gambling and he proposed to keep it stopped if he 
could. Meanwhile the gaming house keepers went on 
furnishing and preparing their establishments for the 
reopening, which they confidently predicted would 
speedily come. 

At the beginning of February the rumor as to the 
reopening of the houses began to gain, and it was 
not until the eve of Valentine’s Day that the inter¬ 
dict was removed, no one knew why or how. The 
last statement which appeared from Mr. Hopkins was 
that while gambling could not be suppressed he was 
determined to prevent houses from running open, and 
that as long as he was Mayor there should be no open 
houses in Chicago, whatever might be done secretly. 
His declaration was so emphatic that it is difficult to 
account for what followed. 

On the 12th of February several houses opened and 
were closed at once by the police. Chief Brennan said : 

‘ ‘ In closing the gambling houses that were opened last 
night the police acted only on my standing instructions. 
I guess if any houses open up the police will know their 
duty; there has been no change in orders.” That utter¬ 
ance was reported on the morning of the 14th of Febru¬ 
ary. On that day every gaming house in Chicago started 
playing in full blast, nor was there even a pretense of 
secrecy. Notwithstanding this, two days after the houses 
were running open Mr. Hopkins declared that he was 
doing all he could to stop gambling. 

“Day before yesterday,” said the Mayor, “I was going to lunch 
with a friend, when we passed under the shelter shed on Da Salle 
Street, in front of the Stock Exchange Building. This shed is placed 
there to protect the people passing from falling bricks and timbers 
from the hands of workmen laboring high up on the uncompleted 
structure. When we reached the center of the shed we encountered 


241 


Gambling and Party Finance. 

a big crowd. Peeping over the heads of the men on the outskirts of 
the crowd I saw a man with a chuckaluck cloth spread out and a 
dozen or more men placing their money on the turn of the dice. I 
did not wish to create a disturbance of so quiet a game, and concluded 
to go to the corner of La Salle and Madison Streets and send a police¬ 
man back to arrest the fellow. Afterwards I wished I had used my 
authority as head of the police force to make the arrest myself, for on 
reaching the corner no policeman could be found. I went back my¬ 
self, but before I got there the fellow had flown.” 

“After dinner I called Chief Brennan to my office and told him 
what I had seen. He informed that this was a common occurrence ; 
that the gambler always had a confederate to watch for the arrival of 
a policeman and when one loomed up on the horizon the gambler, 
being warned, stuffed his cloth and dice into his pocket and walked 
off in the crowd.” 

“This simply shows,” continued the Mayor, “that we cannot stop 
gambling. I am trying to the best of my ability. Chief Brennan had 
his orders soon after I entered upon the duties of my office and he has 
had no modification of the orders since. There is bound to be gam¬ 
bling and it is surprising how many reputable business men want it 
to continue. I have had representatives of prominent wholesale 
houses tell me that they have great difficulty in entertaining their 
country customers because they cannot take them around to gambling 
houses. It is a fact, too, strange as it may seem, that 75 per cent of 
the brewers want gambling houses open.” 

Chief Brennan’s orders were still unchanged and yet 
the public was asked to believe that the Mayor and 
Chief of Police were totally ignorant that everything 
was going on just as before. 

Mr. Harrison at least was bluff, cynical but straightfor¬ 
ward in the matter; he openly avowed that he was permit¬ 
ting gambling to go on for reasons which he set forth ; 
he did not pretend to be doing one thing while in reality 
he was doing the other. He did not, of course, admit 
that he was subsidized by the gamblers ; that would be 
expecting altogether too much from human nature. But 
he did not say he was doing all he could to suppress it, 
while a dozen houses were running full blast under his 
nose; nor did he declare he was opposed to gambling 
and that no house should run open while he was Mayor, 
and then permit the gaming houses to be run as openly as 
they are in Monte Carlo. Mr. Hopkins may have rea¬ 
sons for the course he has taken; that the future will 
show. But at present he has unfortunately given the 


242 


If Christ Came to Chicago . 

enemy so much reason to blaspheme that it will require 
very energetic action hereafter to remove the impression 
that Mr. Hopkins is no better in this respect than his 
predecessors. 


CHAPTER V. 

THE SCARLET WOMAN. 


“Servant, awake, arise, for the people have slept o’er 
long!” is the opening line in the soul stirring summons 
which Mr. Grant Allen in his newly published volume 
of poems, hears reluctant “In the Night Watches.” 

Sing of the maiden, thy sister, whom men thy brothers have sold, 
Cast on the merciless world, on the tide of the ravening years, 

Bought with a price in the market and paid with dishonor and gold, 
Courted and loved and betrayed and deserted to desolate tears. 
******** 

Sing of a pitiless race and the blast of a terrible wrong, 

Poisonous, fiery, venomous. 

“Master, I hear and obey.” 

There is as much need for such a clarion cry to the 
servants of God in the New World as in the Old. The 
terrible wrong “ancient as infinite ages and young as 
the morn of today” is as poisonous, fiery and venomous 
in Chicago as in modern Babylon on the Thames. 

I regret to have to number among the illusions dissi¬ 
pated by this visit to the western hemisphere the be¬ 
lief that the Americans were leading the world in the 
sincerity of their respect for womanhood. The woman 
with money in her purse has more homage—at least from 
the lips outward—than in England, but the poor woman 
is cheaper in Chicago than in London. 

A leading member of the Knights of Labor said the 
other day that the Americans as a nation no longer be¬ 
lieved in God. They worshipped, he said, three things, 
first gold, secondly women, thirdly children. I wish I 
could have found more proofs of their devotion to women 
and to children in their laws. The statutes made and 
provided for the protection of young girls are in many 
states a very grim and ghastly commentary upon the 
traditional respect of the Americans for their women, 

243 


244 U Christ Came to Chicago . 

In some states it is true the law has been amended— 
largely under the influence of the same cyclone of moral 
indignation which raised the age of consent in England in 
1885 from 13 to 16, but in many others the law is still 
in a condition to be a disgrace to heathendom. The 
legislatures of Delaware, of Wisconsin, and other states 
in the following list would seem to be composed of 
Yahoos rather than of Christian citizens of a Republic 
founded by the descendants of the Puritans. The age of 
consent—the technical term used to denote the number 
of years that a girl must have lived before she is regarded 
by the law as competent to consent to her own seduction 
—varies all over the Union. I quote here the black list of 
dishonor from a table compiled by the Philanthropist 
from official returns: 


AGE OF CONSENT. 


Delaware. 


Kentucky. 


years 

Texas. 


Indiana. 


i i 

Idaho. 


Wisconsin. 


i < 

South Dakota. 


Virginia. 


i < 

Carolina, North,.... 


West Virginia.. 

.12 

i < 

“ South. 


Louisiana.. 

.12 

i t 

Georgia. 

.10 “ 

Iowa. 

. 13 


Alabama. 


New Hampshire. 

. 13 

< i 

Minnesota. 

.10 “ 

Tennessee. 

.13 

i < 

Colorado. 






These are the worst states in the Union from this 
point of view. There are others nearly as bad. Seven¬ 
teen states fix the age of consent at 14 and two at 
15. Six follow the English rule and place the age 
of consent at 16. Florida the most southern of all the 
states raises it to 17, while Kansas and Wyoming 
place it at 18. 

The time is coming when such laws as those which 
practically hand over innocent and unsuspecting girl 
children of 7 and 10 to 12 to be the lawful prey of brutes in 
human shape if they can but get their consent—forsooth! 
to something of which they know nothing until it is too 
late will be regarded with as much shame and indignation 
as the Fugitive Slave Eaw. Certainly as long as these 


























The Scarlet Woman. 


2 45 

States persist in leaving defenceless maidenhood with¬ 
out the protection of law, the vaunts about American 
chivalry and high regard for women and children sound 
as hollow as did the Declaration of Independence in the 
old Slave States. 

The increase in the number of young women in Amer¬ 
ica who make their living as clerks, shop girls, teachers 
and other callings which take them away from home, has 
not been accompanied by increased safeguards for their 
protection. Young children are employed as cash girls in 
Chicago at a much earlier age than would be permitted 
in Europe, and in more than one of the great stores ugly 
stories are current of wages being fixed at a rate which 
assumed that they would be supplemented by the allow¬ 
ance of a ‘ ‘friend. ’ ’ The recurrence of this worst feature of 
Parisian shops in the far west is a much more painful 
phenomenon than the appearance of the familiar figure 
of the street walker. In one of the largest of the dry 
goods stores in Chicago the head of the dress making 
department, now happily discontinued, was the manager 
of a house of ill-fame down the levee. She is said to have 
found the combination very convenient as she recruited 
in one establishment by day for assistants in the other at 
night. These things are only too well known to the 
unfortunate victims, but as public exposure would add the 
last drop to their bitter cup, they suffer in silence. 
The Missions and Refuges which receive the shattered 
wrecks of lost womanhood, know only too well how 
deadly is the system by which the daughters reared in 
American homes are lured to their doom. Another lost 
illusion is the belief that American girls are trusted 
with knowledge instead of being kept in that cruel 
ignorance which is confounded with innocence. It is 
not the case. If legal protection peremptorily denied 
the American girl by the men who monopolize the leg¬ 
islative function, neither are they delivered from the 
dangers of ignorance by their mothers. No disability 
of sex stands in the way of the timely performance of the 


246 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

most necessary duty which maternity ever imposed upon 
woman. But even that is denied the American girl. 
Anna B. Gray, M. D., writing in the February number 
of New Occasions , a monthly magazine edited by Mr. 
B. F. Underwood, and published at Chicago, on “Ignor¬ 
ance at the Price of Depravity” bears testimony on this 
point that is worth noting. She writes: 

I have given years of attention to the subject, and have arrived at 
this much of knowledge. In nine out of every ten cases of seduction, 
the woman in America has erred through affection, not passion; that 
instinct of common humanity, most highly developed in women, to 
please the beloved, but chiefly through ignorance. They feel no 
passion; they are totally ignorant of its signs in others, even if they 
feel, they are in equal ignorance of what it means. While that 
much lauded ignorance prevents any thought of evil, the result is 
that before they know they have arrived within sight of it they have 
crossed the threshold of sin. 

I have not arrived at my conclusions hastily nor do I state them lightly. 
I have talked with all sorts and kinds of women from the common 
prostitute to the purest matron, from the girl who committed suicide 
when told of the consequences that would follow her error, to those 
whose sins never became known, and this is my sure conviction:—The 
commonest, and largest factor in the seduction of unmarried women 
is unadulterated ignorance. Ignorance of any love less innocent than 
that which teaches her to clasp a baby in her arms, caress its tender 
limbs, smother it with kisses, and half crush its life out in a passion 
of tenderness. If she wonders at the fervor of the caresses bestowed 
upon her, they mean no more to her, than those she so freely bestowed 
upon her baby brother or sister. 

If any good is to be done in dealing with this saddest 
of all social maladies it must be done betimes. Preven¬ 
tion is a thousand times better than cure and many 
thousand times easier. The chief difficulty that stands 
in the way of frank sensible speech on such subjects 
between parent and child is the absurd prudery which 
in the old days led American matrons to put frills round 
their piano legs and which quite recently led an Ainer- 
can girl to call legacy limbacy, in order to avoid the 
improper first syllable. A prudish silence with ignorance 
as the necessary results lands many an innocent girl in 
Fourth Avenue. This is a subject npon which an ounce 
of fact is worth a pound of theory. The facts are indis¬ 
putable. The keepers of houses of ill-fame who reap the 


The Scarlet Woman. 


247 


harvest of these blighted lives are authorities on this 
point. Take for instance the evidence of Mrs. Vina 
Fields, who next to Carrie Watson is the best known 
Madame in Chicago. Vina Fields is a colored woman 
who has one of the largest houses in the city. During the 
Fair she had over 60 girls in the house, all colored, but 
all for white men. Now she has not more than 30 or 
40. She has kept a house for many years and strange 
though it may appear has acquired the respect of nearly 
all who know her. The police have nothing to say 
against her. An old experienced police matron emphatic¬ 
ally declared that “Vina is a good woman” and I 
think it will be admitted by all who know her, that she is 
probably as good as any woman can be who conducts so 
bad a business. I had a talk with her about it one after¬ 
noon and some days after she wrote me a long letter, 
upon this subject. She says: 

The present state of affairs results from the want of proper knowl¬ 
edge regardingself. When cultivation of self is made universal, a better 
condition is possible, and not until then. The cause for prostitution 
will continue until it is made honorable for the sexes to seek knowl¬ 
edge of self and their duties toward each other. The most important 
things of human life ought to never make an honest educated man or 
woman blush. It is ignorance that causes shame and all this distress. 
Let the causes of life and common things be more understood and 
the greater things will take care of themselves, in private matters 
between man and woman the same as in other things. 

Therein Vina spoke wisely and well. The result of 
not teaching young people the truths of physiology at 
home is that they usually acquire them abroad when it 
is too late. 

Vina Fields is a very interesting woman. She is now 
past middle age. She has made a moderate competence 
by her devotion to her calling and she prides herself 
not a little upon the character of her establishment. 
The rules and regulations of the Fields house, 
which are printed and posted in every room, enforce 
decorum and decency with pains and penalties which 
could hardly be more strict if they were drawn up for 
the regulation of a Sunday school. In it the ladies are 


248 If Chiist Came to Chicago. 

severely informed that even if they have no respect for 
themselves, they should have for the house. She is 
bringing up her daughter who knows nothing of the life 
of her mother in the virginal seclusion of a convent 
school, and she contributes of her bounty to maintain 
her unfortunate sisters whose husbands down south are 
among the hosts of the unemployed. Nor is her bounty 
confined to her own family. Every day this whole 
winter through she has fed a hungry, ragged regiment 
of the out-of-works. The day before I called, 201 men 
had had free dinners of her providing. She had always 
given the broken victuals away, she said, but this year 
the distress had been so great she had bought meat 
every day to feed the poor fellows who were hunting 
jobs and finding none. 

“What brings your girls here? ” I asked. “Passion, 
poverty, or what ? ” 

“Misery,” she answered quietly. “Always misery. I 
don’t know one who came that was not driven here by 
misery. Unhappy homes, cruel parents, bad husbands. 
Misery, always misery. I don’t know one exception. ’ ’ 

On this subject Vina wrote me afterwards at some 
length. And I cannot do better than quote this homily 
on home, the duty of making home happy—although 
few, perhaps, would be prepared to listen to such 
a discourse from the colored keeper of a house of ill- 
fame. 

It is not necessary to go to houses of prostitution to find the cause 
that places girls there. All you have to do is to investigate the 
homes of the people. These women called prostitutes come from 
these homes from every grade of life, from the upper classes as well 
as the others; and I am sorry to say that they give a good percentage 
to this class, as the daughters are educated to an idle, frivolous life. 
As a rule the marriage policy does not work very charmingly, and 
only a few succeed in obtaining comfortable homes, the balance have 
to find shelter wherever they can, and as houses of ill-fame are open 
to this class of woman—they prefer it to dying and starving on the 
street; many of them find it more pleasing and preferable to their 
married lives. These women are no more lustful than their sisters 
in other positions in life. They simply have not been successful in 
marrying a home, and as many, very many do not know how to 
do any kind of work, they come here. 


The Scarlet Woman. 


249 

The only remedy for prostitution will be to educate woman in the 
value of home life. 

It is natural only for man to provide. He cannot make a home 
alone. It is absolutely necessary that there be the mother and wife, 
and as girls enter into the most important condition of life with¬ 
out any previous culture or consideration of the new life that they 
enter, as a rule, there will be failure, and more is to pity than to 
blame for the results. The men from necessity are forced to houses 
of prostitution. Why ? Because the women are uneducated in the 
business of becoming wife and mother, and they, as a rule, know 
nothing about the formation of a new home; that is left to chance. 
Is it any wonder that there is trouble and ruin all around us? Do 
you think that there is even a single instance where a young girl 
leaves her mother to-day to form a new home, that she is taught by 
that mother to believe that the grandest and best work of women is 
to be able to produce a grand, noble woman or man; and that to do 
this her home must be a heaven, and that it rests with her, more 
than all things else, whether her home is a heaven or hell ? The 
great cry of today is the advancement of woman—that means for all 
to make a grand rush for outside employment, other than home 
work. While the husbands and sons are walking the streets idle 
the mother and sisters are earning the living, and by so doing, the 
homes from necessity are dirty and the younger children uncared for 
or left with ignorant nurses, and this state of affairs makes the women 
tired and fretful, the husbands, when they have money, naturally 
seek the house of ill-fame, as wives are too tired from work or devot¬ 
ing their time to society, to give husbands even a pleasant word. 
Yes, I say, the only way out of this trouble is to teach girls the value 
of home, and when women in a mass elevate their homes and make 
them all that the word implies, that is, clean, home-like and cheer¬ 
ful; their kitchen the cleanest and most cheerful room in the 
house, and their parlor for use of the family instead of strangers; the 
houses of ill-fame will have to shut up shop. They will have to close 
for want of patronage. 

When this is made the highest ambition of girl’s life, to be a 
possessor of a model home by her own virtues; and the boys, by 
mother, are taught to value a good woman; they will then think it an 
honor to keep those homes clean and wear a bright smile for husband 
and little ones, and will then know the value of a clean calico dress, 
a gingham apron for work and a white apron for eyes of father and 
dear children. There is not a man living that would not prefer a 
dear little home to “a wandering, no-account, hap-hazard life. ” 

An other typical scarlet woman of Chicago is Carrie 
Watson, whose brown stone house in Clark Street has 
long been one of the scandals of Chicago. She was 
there before the fire and is there still. She does not 
have quite as many girls as Vina Fields but they are 
white and not colored and as she is at the head of her 
shameful profession prices run higher. Business is carried 


250 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

011 openly enough with carriages standing at the door 
at all hours of the night waiting for the “gentlemen” 
inside. Carrie Watson and Lame Jimmy her violin 
player are a typical Chicagoan pair. Lame Jimmy 
acquired an unenviable notoriety this year for at his 
annual benefit-ball one of the best known police 
officers in Chicago was shot dead in the midst of the 
orgy. Lame Jimmy’s benefit is one of the saturnalian 
nights of the Levee when all the professional forces of 
debauchery are let loose to disport themselves in a 
Music Hall with the assistance of the police as the above 
incident shows. Carrie Watson herself has made a 
fortune out of her trade in the bodies of her poorer sisters. 
She is the exploiteur, the capitalist of her class, for the 
same conditions reproduce themselves everywhere. I11 
the brothel as in the factory the person at the top carries 
off most of the booty. Carrie Watson is a smart woman, 
said to be liberal in her gifts to the only churches in her 
neighborhood, one a Catholic just across the way and the 
other a Jewish synagogue which local rumor asserts is run 
rent free owing to Carrie’s pious munificence. This is 
probably a slander but its circulation is significant as 
proving that Carrie Watson can be all things to all men. 
She is emphatically a smart woman, and cynical as might 
be expected. Prostitution is to her the natural result 
of poverty on the part of the woman and of passion on 
the part of the man. She regards the question from 
the economic standpoint. Morals no more enter into 
her business than they do into the business of bulls and 
bears on the Stock Exchange. Girl clerks and stenog¬ 
raphers she says are often unable to earn salaries to 
keep them in clothes to say nothing of the numberless 
relations who are often dependent upon their labor for a 
livelihood. If they have youth, health and good looks 
they can realize these assets at a higher price down 
Clark Street, or on Fourth Avenue than at any other 
place in the city. Women who are desperate go to 
Carrie Watson and her class, as men go to the gaming 


The Scarlet Woman. 


251 

hell in the hope of recouping their fortunes. The mis¬ 
fortune of it is, that women can almost always secure 
their stakes at first, whereas the gambler quite as often 
as not is deterred by an initial failure. Few people 
realize that a young and pretty woman can make more 
money for a short time by what may be called a dis¬ 
criminate sale of her person than the ablest woman in 
America can make at the same age in any profession. 
But as life’s enchanted cup but sparkles near the brim so 
the profits of that life are of very short duration. When 
the bloom is off the rose, a very rapid process of 
degradation sets in which ends in the lock hospital, the 
jail or the drunkard’s grave. 

Carrie Watson agrees with Vina Fields in believing 
that girls do not take to the life from love of vice, neither 
do they remain in it from any taste of debauchery. It 
is an easy lazy way of making a living, and once they are 
started either by force, fraud or ill-luck there is no way 
of getting back. They have to go through with it to 
the bitter end. They bury the memories of the past by 
drinking the waters of that temporary Lethe, which 
men call strong drink, and quiet their conscience by the 
thought that after all they are not worse than the highly 
respectable men who visit them and that they are able 
by suffering the.se things to help relations who would 
otherwise often be in very great straits. Carrie Watson 
for instance says that almost every girl in her house 
has three to four persons depending on her who share 
with her the wages of sin. 

Dora Claflin, who was interviewed at length by a 
representative of the Mail , which published a series of 
articles suggested by some remarks which I made at the 
Central Music Hall last November, spoke with great 
good sense on many phases of this difficult and appall¬ 
ing problem. Like everyone also who has thought 
much upon the subject, either from the inside or from 
the outside she was of the opinion that prevention is a 
far more hopeful field of work than that of rescue. 


252 


If Christ Caine to Chicago. 

“Prostitution is an effect,” said she, “not a careless, voluntary 
choice on the part of the fallen. Girls do not elect to cast themselves 
away. They are driven to the haunts of vice. The more distinctively 
womanly a girl is—and I mean by that the more she has beauty, 
delicacy, love of dress and adornment, feminine weakness—the easier 
a mark is she for the designing. And the designers are not wanting. 

“Girls, and I say this empathically, are not seducers. They have 
innate delicacy and refinement. I say honestly that I do not believe 
that one woman in 10,000 would cast herself at the feet of lust except 
under duress or under the force of circumstances. 

“The recruiting grounds of the bagnio are the stores, where girls 
work long hours for small pay; the homes that have few comforts and 
practically no pleasure; the streets, where girls are often cast, still 
unknown to sin, but in want and without shelter; in a word, places 
outside the levee, where distress and temptation stand ever present as 
a menace to purity and rectitude, behind every effect there is 
a cause. In the case of prostitution the real cause lies not in the girls 
who fall, but in the social conditions that make the fall easy and the 
men who tempt to the step and furnish the money to support degrada¬ 
tion after the step has been taken. Before reform in the levee is 
possible there must be reform in the home, on the mart. The 
people to enlist in the work of reform are the fathers, the husbands, 
the sons, especially the fathers and husbands.” 

I excited much animadversion by saying that if you 
wished to do any good by reforming any section of 
society it was a good plan to take counsel of those who 
were the least disreputable of their class in order to 
know where we are to begin. These three women 
whom I have quoted are probably better qualified than 
anyone else in Chicago to speak as to the profession 
which they have successfully pursued. They all lay 
their finger upon ignorance, poverty and misery, as the 
three great causes of prostitution. 

The question of assignation houses of which the police 
say there are between 400 and 500, is far more difficult 
to deal with nor is it possible to deal with it by the fav¬ 
orite specific of some people by placing them under a 
system of license. Such a remedy would be worse than 
the disease. The utmost that can be done is to keep an 
eye upon notorious houses and when the concourse of 
couples becomes so large as to become a public scandal 
and to leave no doubt as to the character of the 
house it should be proceeded against as a public 
nuisance. But a fresh ordinance would probably be 


The Scarlet Woman . 


253 

required if not an amendment of the statute law of 
Illinois. 

The only licensed houses of ill-fame in Chicago are the 
massage parlors, fully 90 per cent of which places are 
nothing more nor less than houses of prostitution. The 
City Council on May 9th, 1893, passed an ordinance 
licensing these places with a hope that it could thereby 
control them. 

One condition of the license is: 

That it shall be unlawful for any proprietor, manager or employe 
of any room, establishment or place wherein any of the kinds of busi¬ 
ness, treatment or operations mentioned in the first section of this 
ordinance are carried on to furnish, provide, permit or suffer female 
attendants to bathe, treat, manipulate, operate upon or attend male 
patrons. 

It shall be unlawful for any female attendant, employe or inmate 
of any rooms, establishment or place wherein any of the kinds of 
business, treatment or operations mentioned in section one of this 
ordinance are carried on to bathe, treat, manipulate, operate upon or 
attend any male patrons thereof. 

At the first glance this ordinance will appear to be a 
measure for the suppression of the immoral massage 
parlor. It has had the exact opposite effect. The criminal 
code of the State of Illinois says that no person can be con¬ 
victed of a crime where the witness to the crime have been 
guilty of participating in the offense in order to procure 
the necessary evidence to convict. This fact was prom¬ 
inently brought out at the trial of three of the proprie¬ 
tors of massage parlors in this city two months after the 
passage of the ordinance mentioned above. The case, 
in question, was put on trial in the Criminal Court of 
Cook County for three days during which nearly a 
dozen police officers testified to the fact that they had 
gone into the houses in question and had taken the 
baths and massage (?) treatment in order to procure the 
evidence on which to arrest the three defendants. On 
this admission being made a verdict of not guilty was 
returned by the jury on the defendant’s attorney quoting 
the law which prohibited the obtaining of evidence in 
such a manner. By the passage of the ordinance the 


254 V eh™* Came to Chicago. 

power of putting down these places has been virtu¬ 
ally stopped. Previous to the action of the City Council 
the massage parlors were frequently raided and so kept 
under some kind of subjection. At the present time, 
however, the mayor of the city has no power to refuse 
a license to any persons providing their characters are 
good and although he may be morally certain in his 
own mind that such places are going to be run in direct 
violation to the law he has no facts on which he would 
be justified in refusing to grant the license asked for. 

As might be expected the employers of girls are 
very sure that if any of their employes go wrong it 
is not because of insufficient salaries. Indeed it would 
seem from their statements that the standard of female 
morals is higher in a Chicago store than it has ever been 
anywhere since the expulsion of Adam and Eve from 
the garden of Eden. I sent a representative to question 
some of the leading men in the city on the subject. 
Here are their answers in brief. 

E. Hillman, the manager of the Boston Store said “ As far as 
I can remember I never have had a girl who has gone wrong who 
was employed in this store and we employ about 1,900 girls. We take 
every precaution for their being of strict moral character. It is a 
strict rule with us that no young man is allowed to come in and talk 
with the employes or wait for them when they are through work so 
as to escort them home. If this rule is broken and we learn of it we 
immediately discharge the offender. ’ ’ 

H. G. Selfridge, of Marshall Field & Co., has only known of three 
girls who have gone to the bad in the last five years. In his opinion 
it was not want of food but a craving for jewelry and finery that led 
girls into prostitution. 

Arthur Keim, the Superintendent of Siegel, Cooper & Co’s, store 
said in talking on such a subject there is always a feeling of delicacy. 
“ Generally I cannot say much upon the matter but I know that girls 
in this store are paid good living wages. I think that wages makes 
but little difference as only those girls go wrong who have a tendency 
that way.” 

Another gentleman who was principally engaged in employing 
girls and young women at the Fair said: ‘‘From my own experience 
I have found that the question of wages caused but little difference 
with these girls who go wrong. It is the training which they have 
received. Girls in this store all receive $5 or $6 a week and on that 
money a girl can live easily in Chicago.” 

Not food but clothes, not plain clothes but finery, 


The Scarlet Woman. 


255 


that is no doubt the want that drives many to a life of 
shame. The fact that I venture to remind the Woman’s 
Club of is that the peculiar temptation of a woman is 
that her virtue is a realizable asset. It costs a man 
money to indulge in vice, but for a woman it is money 
into pocket. This temptation has naturally greatest 
force when work is scarce, and when sickness is in the 
house. Even if they have a living wage in ordinary 
homes, these periods of stress and strain break them 
down. 

“I lived at home,” said a girl in a house of ill fame, 
“and had a mother and a sister to support on $5 a week. 
One time, however, my mother got ill and I could not 
get the necessary medicine for her. Then some young 
man whom I knew in the street and who came quite 
frequently to my counter to buy goods, offered me a 
good deal of money if I would go with him to an assig¬ 
nation house. I wanted the money for my mother and 
so I went. Having gone once I went again until I 
gradually drifted into a house of prostitution.” 

So it is with many. But there are many employers 
who are not so careful as Mr. Selfridge, who says: “It is 
and has been my custom to ask all girls whether they 
live at home or with friends before engaging them and I 
always make it a practice if they have to pay for 
board and lodging to pay them a larger salary. When 
a girl is inexperienced I refuse to employ her rather 
than pay her a salary on which she cannot live morally.” 

A keeper of one of the best houses on Fourth Avenue 
spoke to me very thoroughly on the subject. She said 
that one of the large dry goods managers had been com¬ 
placently assuring her—he was a customer of hers—that 
he never employed any girls for $2.50 a week unless 
they could live at home. Pin money girls as they call 
them who are maintained in part by their relations, keep 
the rate of wages down below living point. If blood 
relations fail, other relations are too often established. 
As Mr. Hillman, of the Boston store says: “A girl who 


256 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

boards out cannot support herself on a low wage. We 
have to enforce the rule as to living with the family 
or with friends to insure the moral character of our 
employes. ’ ’ 

The procuress plies her trade in Chicago as in other 
large cities, preying upon youth and inexperience. They 
haunt the railway depots, they are quick to discover the 
pretty girl who is out of work, and they are quite often 
in attendance at the County Hospital. Excellent socie¬ 
ties of good women have done much to warn inexperi¬ 
enced girls of their danger and to provide them with a 
place of shelter. But their efforts are inadequate and 
there are many girls in houses of ill fame who have been 
taken there by plausible ladies who “knew of such nice 
lodgings, you know, with a teacher of music who takes 
such an interest in young girls.” They did not know 
anything until it was too late. These girls are as inno¬ 
cent of any wish to go wrong as the deer is innocent of 
any wise to be shot or snared. 

The keepers of houses always deny indignantly 
the accusation that they recruit their establishments 
with unwilling volunteers. They profess to detest 
“green horns.” They prefer experienced women well 
broken to the work, etc., etc. All the same there are 
many who are only too glad to obtain young simpletons 
whom they can fleece even if they cannot, as is some¬ 
times the case, realize heavily upon them for rum. One 
well known procuress, Mrs. Davis, was arrested twelve 
months ago for one of these offenses, but she escaped. 
Criminals “who have a pull” can usually escape in 
Chicago. And procuresses, of necessity, “stand in” 
with the police whom they subsidize for permission to 
live. 

Cabmen in Chicago are frequently the active agents of 
the houses of ill fame. If they find a pretty girl who has 
not enough money to pay her fare they can usually 
raise the money by delivering her at a sporting house. 
That this is done may seem incredible but it was not 


The Scarlet Woman. 


2 57 


merely admitted but even complained of by keepers of 
houses, who being overstocked objected to the practice 
of an imposition. One madame on Fourth Avenue told 
me that on three occasions last year she had received 
consignments in this fashion. She did not want the 
girls so she handed them over to the Annex to Harrison 
Street police station. If only any one will take the 
time and trouble to watch some of the depots and houses 
of prostitution on Plymouth and Custom House places 
in the “levee” district, and those on Dearborn street and 
Armour avenue, in the vicinity of 22nd street they will 
realize the sad state of affairs. 

An ex-police reporter in this city said recently: “I have 
to my knowledge had four distinct cases of cabmen tak 
ing young girls, who had just arrived in the city and 
engaged him to drive them to a hotel, to a house of ill 
fame. In each of these cases the girls were only saved 
by police interference, and yet no effort was made to 
punish the guilty driver of the vehicle in which the 
girls had been driven to the houses where they were 
found. ’ ’ 

The best proof that the practice exists is the fact that 
the City Council has passed an ordinance expressly 
directed against it. It runs as follows: 

It shall be unlawful for any licensed owner or driver of any coach, 
cab, public cart or other vehicle to convey any person without his 
request to any place or house of ill-fame, or deceive any person in 
relation to any railroad or other ticket or voucher for conveyance 
which is worthless, or make any false representation or statement in 
regard to any voucher or ticket for conveyance that may be shown to 
him, under the penalty of not less than ten dollars for each and every 
offence .—Municipal Code , p. 291 , Sec. 1202. 

When once a young girl is ensnared there is very lit¬ 
tle chance of her escaping. The police report that 20 
per cent of the girls between 14 and 18 reported miss¬ 
ing are never heard of. Those zealous A. P. A. emis¬ 
saries who work themselves up into a fever heat of 
indignation and of passion because of more or less 
imaginary narratives of the way in which convents are 
used to imprison unwilling maidens, would find a more 


258 If Christ Came to Chicago . 

profitable field for their emotions in contemplating the 
underground railway by which keepers of houses of ill- 
fame move girls out of the way. After a girl has been 
ruined in one town, especially if there is any trouble, 
she is exchanged for a safer girl in another city. A case 
of this kind, which can be vouched for, occurred about 
a year ago. L. M., a girl of 18, came to Chicago from 
a well-known city in the western part of New York. 
While here she was seduced under a promise of marri¬ 
age and taken to a house of ill-fame on South Clark 
street. Meanwhile she had ceased writing to her parents, 
and they, fearful that she had met with an accident, 
communicated with the police here. She was located 
soon afterwards, but before the authorities could arrest 
her she was sent to Council Bluffs, la. A few weeks 
later another girl arrived at the South Clark street resort 
to take the place of L. M. Strange to say, she had 
come from the same house in Council Bluffs to which her 
fallen sister had been sent. Her story was also on the 
same line with that of the deported girl. 

Many other girls are taken from the County Hospital, 
where the authorities could interfere with effect in 
enforcing some standard of civilized decency. 

In places of amusement, the Park Theatre is an outrage 
as it has been and is being conducted. The whole theatre 
is an exhibition which would be more in place in Sodom 
and Gomorrah than in Chicago. The proprietors, it is 
said, make friends of the powers which be by subscribing 
to the funds of both parties. Whether that is so or not I 
cannot say. As a matter of fact it is but the antecham¬ 
ber to a lupanar. The moral level of its stage is below 
that of a decently conducted sporting house. The Mid¬ 
way dance was one of its standing attractions long after 
it had been banished from Boston and New York. 
Although the manager lied to me like a Trojan on the 
only occasion when I visited the place, I had no diffi¬ 
culty in obtaining trustworthy information as to the 
orgies which have given an evil fame to the wine room. 


The Scarlet Woman. 


259 


In a book called “In Darkest Chicago” it was stated 
that dancing by naked women was one of the regular 
performances of this theater after the play concluded. 
That, however, I think, is no longer true, the only dif¬ 
ference, however, being that when the women dance 
the cancan in the Park they pay such homage to decency 
as is implied in the wearing of a single garment which 
enhances rather than interferes with the obscene sug¬ 
gestiveness of the performance. An outward semblance 
of decency could be secured by cancelling their license 
whenever their decorations or entertainments violated 
the municipal standard of decency. There is no neces¬ 
sity for making that standard extreme or puritanical, 
but in a civilized city the goatlike gambols of Satus 
might be forbidden. It would be too much no doubt to 
expect certain classes, including some of the most 
respectable so-called citizens, to comport themselves 
like human beings, but they might certainly be com¬ 
pelled to preserve the natural decency of an ordinary 
brute beast. The unnatural and worse than bestial per¬ 
formances which are carried on in certain places in Chi¬ 
cago well known to the police ought to land a consider¬ 
able number of persons in Joliet for the rest of their 
natural lives. Offences which in England a very short 
time ago sent men to the gallows and still entail penal 
servitude are among the sights of Chicago which are 
not interfered with by the police, because it is held by 
large wholesale houses, so the story runs, that it is nec¬ 
essary for them to have certain amusements for their 
country customers. Entertainers are attached to the 
large wholesale houses, and when the country customer 
comes in to make his purchases the entertainer person¬ 
ally conducts him round the sights of the town. As 
Mayor Hopkins remarked when discussing the gam¬ 
bling houses, it is surprising how many merchants in 
this city approve of their existence for the sake of their 
country customers. They say that the first night a 
country customer comes to town he is taken to the 


260 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

theater; next he is taken round to the questionable 
resorts, and on the third night he insists upon going to 
the gambling hells. The questionable resorts to which 
the Mayor referred as occupying the country cousin’s 
second night may be said to be run, if not under the 
patronage of the police, at least with their cognizance. 
A friend of mine who made the round was personally 
escorted by a detective. When the police and the large 
wholesale houses and country cousins are in collusion to 
support unnatural crimes which the good people of Chi¬ 
cago fondly imagined existed only in the corruption of 
the later Roman Empire, it is obvious that the moral 
reformer has a very up-hill task before him. 


PART IV. — Christ's Church in Chicago . 


CHAPTER I. 

THE CHURCHES OF THE SECTS. 

I shall never forget the almost overpowering sense of 
sympathy and sorrow which overwhelmed me on the 
morning of the conference in Central Music Hall. I 
had been discussing, until long past midnight on Satur¬ 
day, with policemen, saloon keepers, gamblers and 
keepers of houses of ill fame what Christ would think of 
them and of us in this city of Chicago. I had heard 
their unconventional exclamations as they were suddenly 
confronted with this unwonted suggestion. I had seen 
the brutalization of men by drink and vice until the 
human, let alone the Divine image, had almost disap¬ 
peared, and the still sadder sight of women who were 
somebody’s daughters continuing a life of vice from the 
terrible conviction that there was no escape. 

A feeling of sorrow for these people—a feeling of 
bitter heartache at the thought of my own inability to 
do them any good or give them any relief, was after a 
time completely swallowed up by a new emotion which 
took possession of me almost in spite of myself. I felt 
so sorry for Christ! I have never been able to indulge 
in these devout but sombre meditations on the actual 
facts of our Lord’s passion with any sense of real anguish. 
It was hard no doubt—all that wandering down the 
dolorous way, and cruel, brutally cruel, the martyrdom 
of the Cross, but it happened a long time ago. The halo 
of supernatural glory which surrounds His tragic death 
cannot disguise the fact that so far as mere physical 
pain was concerned His suffering could not compare with 

261 



262 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

that of uncounted myriads of His brethren who had 
gone down to the invisible world amid protracted 
agonies of torture, compared with which the way of the 
Cross was a comparatively swift and easy relief. But 
when I had this fresh realizing sense of the greatness of 
the sorrow which he came to relieve and which still 
remains unstanched and of the maimed souls crushed 
and mangled out of all semblance of the Divine image, 
the sense of failure of it all, the thwarting of the great 
aspiration came home to me with a freshness almost incon¬ 
ceivable, considering how long I have been familiar with 
some of the saddest sorrows of the world. Was it for this 
He came to earth? Is the 19th precinct of the 1st ward 
with its poor girls in the Fourth Avenue houses, and its 
toughs and the crooks down the levee, the fruit which 
He might expect to find after nineteen hundred years ? 
If I felt it so much, having but seen for a few moments 
one infinitesimal shred of the world’s garment of mourn¬ 
ing and heaviness, if I, all flawed and faulty as I am, yet 
feel the iron enter my soul, what must He have felt, 
who has heard the dropping of their tears in heaven 
these nineteen hundred years ? 

It is this which is the real passion of our Lord ! 
The unabandoned sin, the unstanched tears, the abound¬ 
ing bitterness of the human heart, these are the real 
crown of thorns which the world has crushed upon His 
wounded brow. 

Long ago, Darwin’s Descent of Man, gave me a simi¬ 
lar sense of the immanence of God. Until then, in a 
vague sort of way, I had had the feeling, common I 
suppose to most of us, that the world had been created 
long ago and that creation was as much a past event as 
the Norman Conquest, or the war of the American In¬ 
dependence. But Darwin made me see that the creative 
work is going on today as much as at any previous 
time in the history of the world, for we stand in the 
very work shop in which the Eternal is from day to day 
fashioning the world in which we live. So in the 


The Churches of the Sects. 263 

bitterness of that dreary night I felt that our Ford’s 
passion and crucifixion was no longer a bygone instance 
in the history of the human race. The Passion and the 
Cross are for us day by day and hour by hour, moment 
by moment. Nor will He cease from dwelling amongst 
us—the living word made manifest in flesh—as long as 
men and women live, and love, and sin, and suffer, and 
go down forlorn into the pit. 

There was sadness and anguish in the thought, but 
there was also a great consolation, and a wonderful stay 
and solace in this new realization of the omnipresence of 
the Cross. And then there came the comforting thought 
in the midst of it all, that He who saw it all from the 
beginning never lost heart, never struck sail to a fear, 
never doubted even when the sky was blackest and hope 
seemed dim, that God was love, and that in the end we 
shall see as He saw that even those things will work 
out for those who suffer and those who bleed a far more 
exceeding weight of glory. 

At present we must work by faith and not by sight, 
and if Christ came to earth His first instinct would sure¬ 
ly be to seek out those who are called by His name, if 
only to ascertain how it was that these things were so 
after all these years, and what they were doing to banish 
evils which banish love from the lives of so many of 
his brethren. 

Of all the churches in Chicago the first place to which 
He would turn his steps, would be the Catholic Church, 
over which Archbishop Feehan presides as the represent¬ 
ative of that Vicar of Christ, whose seat is in the Eternal 
city. Archbishop Feehan is a good and saintly man, 
ascetic in habits of life, devoted to his offices and the 
punctilious discharge of all the duties of his high office. 
Behind him there is all the spiritual authority derived 
from the traditions of the Roman Church and their vital 
connection with a hierarchy which encompasses the 
world. 

Under him as spiritual chief and director general of 


264 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

the forces of the Catholic Church, there are two hundred 
and fifty celibate priests. Some of them zealously 
enthusiastic, humble and devoted saints of God, work¬ 
ing with a zeal that never tires, and with a self-sacrifice 
of which the world knows little or nothing in order to 
maintain Christian law and Christian discipline within the 
polyglot host which worships in the one hundred 
churches over which the Archbishop has supreme con¬ 
trol. Every Sunday in these churches they gather 
together from as early as four in the morning twice as 
many citizens of Chicago as attend all the other churches 
of all the other denominations put together. 

Five hundred thousand of the inhabitants of Chicago 
believe more or less implicitly that Archbishop Feehan 
is their divinely appointed commander-in-chief in the 
great campaign that is ever being waged against the 
forces of evil. 

But while recognizing the perfection of discipline and 
drill which the Catholic host has attained by the daily 
or weekly maneuvers on the ecclesiastical parade ground, 
while doing glad homage to all that is high and noble 
and self-sacrificing in the great communion with its 
saintly sisterhoods, its enthusiastic orders and its conse¬ 
crated priests, I must admit a sense of bewilderment 
that a power so great should be lodged in hands so 
feeble, and that the army maintained at so great an 
expense, both of money and labor, should have so little 
influence on the civic life of Chicago. 

Much is said, and foolishly said, by persons who hate 
Rome much more than they love anything in heaven 
or earth, against the intrusion of the church in politics. 
But if the church be the divinely appointed instrument 
for the reconstruction of society in accordance with the 
law of God, if in short the church be the chosen organiza¬ 
tion, as, presumably, Archbishop Feehan believes, by 
which the mandate of God is to be established here on 
earth among men, it cannot keep out of politics excepting 
by delivering them over to the devil. That is what seems 


The Churches of the Sects . 265 

to have been done in Chicago, nor has the Evil One 
shown any lack of alacrity in accepting the charge. 

But if Christ came what would He say concerning the 
organization called by His name offering Him constantly 
sacrifice of prayer and praise, and the sacrament of the 
mass, but which refuses to lift a finger or stir a hand in 
the great struggle for honesty, justice and righteousness 
in the government of Chicago? 

The A. P. A’s., or the modern Know-nothings, who 
call themselves the American Protective Association, 
probably because most of their members are not 
Americans but Canadians or Britons, whose reason for 
protecting American citizenship is not quite apparent, 
assert that the Catholic Church is only too active in 
politics in Chicago, and in proof thereof they parade the 
following tabulated statement of the offices which are held 
in Cook County by Catholics. 

The Catholics of Chicago have: 

The Mayor. 

The Chief of Police. 

The Chief of the Fire Department. 

The Postmaster. 

The City Attorney. 

Clerk of the Circuit Court. 

Clerk of the Probate Court. 

Clerk of the Superior Court. 

A number of the Judges. 

Forty-five of the sixty-eight Aldermen. 

Ninety per cent of the police force, eighty per cent of 
the members of the fire department, and sixty-seven per 
cent of the school teachers are Catholics, while eighty 
per cent of the pupils are Protestants—as half the Catho¬ 
lic pupils go to priests’ schools. 

Mr. Hopkins is the first Catholic Mayor the city has 
ever had, and had it not been for Protestant support he 
would have been ignominiously defeated. His majority 
was made up of 75,000 Catholics and 38,000 Protestants. 
Both the Chief of Police and the Chief of the Fire 
Department were in office before his election, and 
by general consent are the fittest for the post what- 


266 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

ever their religious belief. The fact that the Catholics 
predominate in the police and the fire departments 
is more due to the fact that they are Irish than because 
they are Catholics. The alleged preponderance of the 
school teachers has nothing whatever to do with politics. 
Every teacher is appointed after an open examination, 
conducted by Protestants, and if sixty or seventy per 
cent, are Catholics it would seem to indicate the intellec¬ 
tual superiority of the Catholics who go in for teaching. 
This is surprising, but it is in no way due to the 
political influence of the Catholic Church. 

Still these figures are sufficient to show what an 
enormous interest the church has in the administration 
of the city. And the fact that the Catholics preponderate 
so largely in the City Council ought to rouse the 
church to spare no effort to rid the City Hall of the re¬ 
proach under which it .at present labors.* 

But to use the influence of the Church merely to get 
jobs for Catholics is a conception that reeks of the 
Ring. For the church to go into politics for the spoils 
would be a church that had gone into politics not for 
the kingdom of God, but for the boodle, and would be 
morally on the same level with Alderman Powers and 
other distinguished but unhonored members of the City 
Council. 

The evils which afflict the city as the result of our 
forgetting God fall with heaviest weight upon the poor¬ 
est citizens. The majority of these belong to Archbishop 
Feehan’s flock. Yet so far as they are concerned, he 


♦Archbishop Hennessey of Dubuque, who preached in Chicago in December, 
spoke words which ought not to have fallen on deaf ears. He said: “There is a 
tradition, brethren, that 900 years before the birth of Columbus this country was 
colonized by a band of Irish people. It was called the Great Ireland of the West. 
I can see in a vision the future of America and the Catholic Church wherein it will 
be again called the Great Ireland of the West. What are you doing? There are 
half a million communicants in the church in this city. Chicago is the most 
Catholic city of America in proportion to its population. All nations of the earth 
are here represented, and there is a multitude of societies. Take my suggestion 
and work for the future of the church of Christ. Build up your schools, make 
them commodious and ample, make them free schools, so that the children of 
the poor may enjoy their benefits. Elevate the standard of education to the plane 
of the government of God’s divine church. Marshal your forces, and you shall 
become the center of the Catholic £hurch in America.” 



The Churches of the Sects. 267 

might as well be the Archbishop of Timbuctoo as Arch¬ 
bishop of Chicago. * 

No one would dream that the Catholic Church in 
Chicago should sully the purity of its sacerdotal gar¬ 
ments by arraying itself on the side of corrupt republicans 
or corrupter democrats. Partisanship of that kind is 
alien to the spirit and contrary to the whole conception 
of the church. But not less hostile to the whole tra¬ 
ditions of the church are the lethargy and callous in¬ 
difference with which the Archbishop and his advisors 
have seen this half Catholic city plunged into the mire 
of corruption without one word from the Archbishop to 
warn the faithful as to the sin which they were bringing 
upon their city and the danger which would follow to 
their own souls and to those of their children after them. 

It was said of old time in one of the early writings of 
the Christian Church, “If the neighbor of an elect man 
sinneth, the elect man has sinned himself.” How much 
more then must the sin of the Catholic boodlers in the 
council and the corruption of the Catholic wards in the 
city lie at the door of the Catholic Archbishop in Chicago-! 
He sees things going from bad to worse under the very 
shadow of the spires of his churches but has he ever said 
a word or done a deed to rally the forces under his com- 


* Some people complain of the Pope's interference in American affairs. It is 
much tc. be regretted that he cannot intervene much more than he does in Chicago. 
L,eo XIII would have very little patience with such inertia in face of the present 
social crisis as prevails in this Diocese. That is to say if we may assume that he 
meant what he said in his recent Encyclical. The Pope is not a mere preacher or 
letter-writer. He is a general or commander of a great black-coated army of eccle¬ 
siastics all over the world. He reigns over the Empire of the Confessional, as Eng¬ 
land reigns over the Empire of the Sea. When he says that the Church ought to 
concern itself with the solution of the Social Question, he practically asserts that 
every Catholic priest everywhere should do his uttermost to bring to bear the teach¬ 
ings of the Encyclical npon the community in which he lives. For political ques¬ 
tions tend to become more and more social questions, and in all social questions the 
Pope tells us the influence of the Church is essential to their right solution. If, 
therefore, the Church stands apart from their consideration, she makes their right 
solution impossible. 

The Encyclical deprives Archbishop Feehan forever of the excuse of Cain. 
At present, when a strike or an agrarian revolt breaks out, there are many members 
of Christian Churches who shrug their shoulders, saying, “It’s no affair of ours. 
Am I my brother’s keeper?” “Yes,” replies the Pope, “you are your brother’s 
keeper, and his blood will I require at your hands.” Henceforth, whenever any 
social question disturbs the community, the Catholic priests will feel that they have 
failed ?n their duty if they have not in some way or other made their influence and 
their teaching helpful to the solution of the problem. 



268 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

mand in support of the cause of honesty, justice and fair 
dealing with the poor? 

When Gregory the Great was told one day that a 
solitary unknown beggar had been found dead from 
starvation in the streets of Rome, he excommunicated 
himself for having allowed such a thing to happen in a 
city under his rule. For days he abstained from com¬ 
munion, shutting himself up in his silent cell, to make 
atonement by tears and penance for his sin of omission 
towards that poor starveling. 

If the Archbishop of Chicago had but something of 
the heart and soul that was in St. Gregory, the suffer¬ 
ings and privations of this last winter would not have 
left him unmoved. 

If Christ came to Chicago would he find a greater dis¬ 
appointment anywhere than the spectacle the greatest of 
all His churches doing ecclesiastical goose step in the 
parade ground, but refusing to go forth to battle against 
the powers of wickedness in high places, and against all 
the tyrannies which oppress the poor, because, forsooth! 
—it might endanger the church and create difficulties 
even with some of its own members. As armies exist in 
order to fight so churches are founded in order to en¬ 
counter dangers and to face difficulties. Nor would there 
have been an Archbishop in Chicago to-day had earlier 
archbishops been as timid and incapable of rising to the 
height of great opportunity as Archbishop Feehan. 

Turning from the Catholic Church to the non- 
Catholic churches in the community which number in 
the whole city about 200,000 members, and having 
an attendance every Sunday which is probably not more 
than 100,000 and sometimes considerably less, we have 
spiritual forces which at least are free from the paralysis 
of a commander in chief whose ideal of strategy is to keep 
his army out of the field. In the non-Catholic sections 
of the church of Chicago there exists great diversity 
with 110 unity. The spirit, however, of co-operation 
exists and at the conference held this winter representa- 


The Churches of the Sects. 269 

tives of the various parties expressed a great desire to 
co-operate so as to take more effective action in the 
campaign against the evils which afflict the city. 

The various churches are wealthy, comfortable, 
served by able and zealous ministers and sung to by 
choirs of ecclesiastical nightingales. Very few are as 
fruitful in good works in the shape of institutional side¬ 
shows as we are accustomed to in England but here and 
there you will find a church that reaches out on all 
sides to minister to the wants of the community. 

The Salvation Army lives among the poorest people, 
works with them, gathers them together every night 
and contributes a valuable element to the building up 
of saner and sounder citizenship than that which yet 
prevails in many precincts of Chicago. 

But the Protestant churches for the most part, judg¬ 
ing by the complaints which are heard from inside 
the church rather than from the outsiders, has suc¬ 
cumbed largely to the temptation of “being at ease in 
Zion.” The Methodist ministers were told somewhat 
rudely by a speaker recently that men were needed who 
would do more than make faces at the devil from behind 
the pulpit. 

And the most enterprising of their number are at 
present considering whether they could not establish 
some mission resembling that of Mr. Price Hughes in 
the west of London in some of the spiritually destitute 
districts of Chicago. 

The growth of Epworth Leagues and Christian 
Endeavor Societies is a sign of progress in the right 
direction, but I do not know of any church in Chicago 
which utilizes the whole of its ecclesiatical plant as vig¬ 
orously as do some of the leading churches of England. 
Two services a day on Sunday and a prayer meeting, 
possibly once or twice a week, can hardly be said to 
be making the best use of an investment in real estate 
which is estimated to amount at least to $13,000,000. 
All money sunk in church buildings is God’s trust 


270 If Christ Came to Chicago . 

money. If it belonged to anyone else and were invested 
by trustees so as to yield interest only one day out of 
seven the trustees would either be sent to the peniten¬ 
tiary or the lunatic asylum. They would certainly not 
be held to have used the trust to the best advantage. 

As it is with the church buildings so it is with the 
membership. Instead of regarding the church members 
as saved souls come together for the purpose of saving 
others, the tendency is too much to regard them as the 
members of a select club, meeting together for their 
spiritual edification, and for harmless aesthetic indul¬ 
gence. 

Some ministers have roundly asserted that many of 
the richer churches in the city are nothing more nor less 
than social clubs, which are quite out of touch with the 
masses of the people. They represent not so much 
sacred dynamos for the generation of spiritual force capa¬ 
ble of lighting the whole district, but huge fly-wheels 
driven at great expenditure of coal without any driving 
belt. It is too much in the fashion to lay the blame 
for all this on the ministers. Some ministers are to 
blame, no doubt, but the responsibility lies at least as 
much at the door of the congregation and especially at 
that of the trustees. 

In America the Erastian theory of a church under 
the influence or domination of the state is scouted and 
rightly scouted, but Erastianism is very much like 
Mother Nature. Even if they expel it with brute 
force it will find its way back again after a little delay. 

Each of the churches is free. It represents in theory 
a spiritual power entirely free from the control of the 
world, but as many a minister knows full well he is 
very effectually tethered by the secular power in the shape 
of a trustee or a liberal contributor to the collections. 
It has been said to me repeatedly that the devil has a 
mortgage upon many of the pulpits in Chicago, and he 
will promptly foreclose if ministers are to presume too 
much upon the liberty of prophesying. 


271 


The Churches of the Sects. 

On the last occasion on which I addressed an audience 
in Central Music Hall I made some observations on this 
point which I venture to reprint here: 

I have talked a great deal to ministers of religion of all denomina¬ 
tions, since I came here. Some of them shrug their shoulders and say 
“Well, it is all very well talking, but if I were to denounce a man 
whom I knew to be a scoundrel who was standing for alderman I 
would offend some very influential members of my congregation and 
that would not do for the interests of religion. ’ ’ But if the Church of 
God exists for anything in this world is it not in order to raise men 
and women who are prepared to take a little risk for God and his 
Christ, and if the ministers of religion think it is sufficient answer to 
any appeal made to them to enter into a campaign for righteousness 
that it might offend some members of their congregations, then there 
is a great need for a revival of religion among ministers of re¬ 
ligion. 

I have spoken, also, to other ministers. They say ‘ ‘We are with you 
heart and soul and to the best of our ability we have preached in this 
sense. We have laid righteousness to the line, and justice to the 
plummet, and we have endeavored to stir up our congregations but 
they do not like it.” Said one eminent minister in the city recently, 
“When I preach a sermon like that to my people they are not pleased. 
They do not come to the church to hear that, they want to hear a 
sermon which would make them feel good. They want to be told 
concerning the good people of old times and have Christian doctrine 
expounded, and they wish to have a blissful future portrayed to them 
of the place where they will go when they die. I am of a very 
sympathetic nature and I have never felt unsympathetic to anyone who 
wishes to feel good—feel comfortable, I mean. I have a great deal 
of sympathy with those good men and women who have been toiling 
and moiling through the week and who wish to get into a place where 
the world and all its cares would be shut out, and where they could sit 
down and sing their souls away to everlasting bliss. ” It is very nat¬ 
ural but it does not follow that it is right because it is natural. 

I will take you to another scene which is also very natural and 
which appeals even more strongly to many men and women than the 
seductive influence of a fashionable church and congregation. Go with 
me down the Levee. Go along until you come to a down stairs dive. 
You go down the steps and knock on the door in a peculiar kind of a 
way. A long pigtailed heathen comes to the door. You then find 
yourself in an opium joint of which there are a good many in that 
quarter fulfilling many useful offices among others tending to enable 
our hard worked police to increase their perquisites. The atmosphere 
is not incense ladened, but through the dim light you see reclining on 
tressel beds or bunks persons, each of whom has a pipe and is care¬ 
fully engaged in putting a little pill of opium into it in order that they 
may smoke it. You sit down a while and talk to that Chinee and 
after a time you begin to find out that there is a most wonderful 
spiritual resemblance between the opium joint and the fashionable 
church. Because the poor wretch who is lying there wishes to get 
away from the world and its cares and the turmoil and troubles of 


272 If Christ Came to Chicago . 

this evil life and lie likes to smoke himself away for a brief season into 
everlasting bliss into a realm which is not a real realm and which has 
no bearing upon real life. That man feels good and I sympathize with 
him. H feels that for half an hour or so he gets away from all his 
troubles and cares into another region, a more exalted region it 
seems to him, and there is just about as much religion in it as there 
is in the other one. Perhaps there is a little bit more, for the man 
with the pigtail does not sing hymns protesting all the time he is 
pleasing Jesus Christ who resents faithful preaching urging present 
duty because they prefer to be lulled into pleasant imagining of a 
blissful future or a miraculous past. Those people are just like the 
habitues of the opium joint. It is not religion. It takes them away 
from the duties of religion and leaves them in a region which is 
neither heaven nor earth but is betwixt and between, and which from 
the point of view of citizenship is precious little good. 

I hope it is not necessary for me to protest that I have 
no wish to underestimate the amount of sincere religion 
that exists in every church. It is not because I disbe¬ 
lieve in the church that I appeal so strongly and pro¬ 
test so vehemently against the misuse of the immense 
power which the churches could wield if they were to but 
concentrate their forces with ordinary common sense, 
upon the redemption of the city. But if we endeavor 
to place ourselves in the position of our Lord, were He 
to visit Chicago, to see what progress had been made 
towards the establishment of His kingdom in this city, 
is it not obvious that His heart would be saddened by 
the present condition of the churches called by his 
name ? 

Instead of finding each of these congregations, which 
gather together for worship every Sunday, in His name, 
working hard to get His law fulfilled and His brethren 
saved from the wicked injustices to which they are now 
subjected under the existing city government, they are 
comfortably assembling once or twice a week, for the 
purpose of hearing a good talk about Him and of having 
their senses thrilled by choirs who offer the service of 
praise in the hearing of the congregation. 

Is it uncharitable to say that of all the disappointments 
caused by the comparison between the real and the 
ideal the greatest disappointment which Christ would 
find in Chicago would be in his own church ? 


273 


The Churches of the Sects . 

The sectarian churches, whether they be of Rome or 
against Rome, are not in touch with the whole com¬ 
munity. They have no close direct bearing relations with 
every householder. There is no system in the ecclesiasti¬ 
cal organization corresponding to the ward and precinct 
organization which enables the municipal govern¬ 
ment to cover the whole town. Although the churches 
may fraternize and their members be on visiting terms 
with each other, ecclesiastically as well as socially, 
there is no attempt to create a central executive empow¬ 
ered to wield the united force of all the churches against 
the common enemies of all. It is something gained that 
they should be civil to each other Some of them are 
not even that. Yet there is in the more advanced 
churches a genuine desire to enter into closer relations 
with each other. Of this the recent formation of a Minis¬ 
terial Federation is a hopeful sign.* 

Once more let me conclude with an extract from the 
Gospel according to Russell Lowell, for the great Ameri¬ 
can puts the truth more forcibly in verse than we can 
express it in prose. In no poem has he uttered 
thoughts as to the non-ecclesiastical church more 
thrillingly than in ‘ ‘ The Search. ’ ’ In this poem Lowell 
tells us how he went to seek for Christ, “for Christ, I 
said, is King.” He searched for him in the solitude of 
nature, and found him not; and then, “ ’mid power and 
wealth I sought, but found no trace of him.” The 
churches had become the mere sepulchre of their risen 
Lord, and divine service a mere formal mustering, as 
for roll-call, of men in the empty tomb:— 

And all the costly offerings I had brought 
With sudden rust and mould grew dim : 

I found His tomb, indeed, where, by their laws, 

All must on stated days themselves imprison, 

Mocking with bread a dead creed’s grinning jaws, 

Witless how long the life had thence arisen; 

Due sacrifice to this they set apart, 

Prizing it more than Christ’s own living heart. 


See Appendix. The Federation of Ministers of Religion. 



274 U Christ Came to Chicago . 

The poet-seeker then turned to the heedless city, 
where he came, led by fresh-trodden prints of bare and 
bleeding feet, and found his quest:— 

I followed where they led, 

And in a hovel rude, 

With nought to fence the weather from His head, 

The King I sought for meekly stood; 

A naked hungry child 

Clung round His gracious knee, 

And a poor hunted slave looked up and smiled, 

To bless the smile that set him free; 

New miracles I saw His presence do— 

No more I knew the hovel bare and poor— 

The gathered chips into a woodpile grew, 

The broken morsel swelled to goodly store. 

I knelt and wept; my Christ no more I seek, 

His throne is with the outcast and the weak. 


CHAPTER JI. 

THE CHURCH CATHODIC AND CIVIC. 

If Christ came to Chicago and sought to discover His 
church He would not be likely to mistake any of the 
existing ecclesiastical sectarian institutions for the society 
which he founded for the purpose of carrying on the 
work of the redemption of the world. 

Where then would He find it ? To answer that 
question it is necessary for us to ask ourselves what 
Christ meant by the church and what as a matter of 
fact the church was and did in the early days of the 
Christian era. If we further consider the evils which ex¬ 
ist in Chicago, which must be exorcised if the city is 
to be won for Christ it is obvious that the church mili¬ 
tant must be the organization which can combat those 
evils. The church in every age has been an association of 
those who endeavor to do Christ’s work and make Christ’s 
will supreme among men. “Thy will be done in earth 
as it is in Heaven.” If we keep those two ideas steadily 
before us we shall not be far wrong in coming to the 
conclusion that if Christ came to Chicago, the City and 
County administration would seem to Him to be more 
like the church which He founded nineteen hundred 
years ago than any other organization lay or ecclesiastical 
which exists in Chicago at this moment. 

Considering the iniquities that are permitted under the 
rule of the City Hall it is a somewhat startling paradox 
to assert that Christ would regard that as the cathedral 
of his church in Chicago. But the temple in Jerusalem 
was none the less the temple of Jehovah because false 
incense was sometimes burned on its altars to false gods. 
So although the council chamber is packed with boodlers 
nevertheless it is the Council and the County Commis¬ 
sioners which are doing most of the work that the Chris- 

275 


276 If Christ Came to Chicago . 

tian church in the early ages regarded as its distinctive 
function. The City Hall is more faithful than any of 
churches to certain of the great ideals of Christ, and it 
is only through the City Council and the Town Com¬ 
missioners that Satan’s invisible kingdom can be effect¬ 
ively attacked.* 

If we look at things as they are, resolutely refusing to 
allow ourselves to be blinded by their labels, we shall 
not be long in discovering that the City government, 
both in theory and in practice, much more closely 
resembles the ideal Christian Church than any of the 
existing ecclesiastical churches. To begin with in the 
Apostolic times there was one church for one city. 
There was the Church of Thyatira, the Church of Phil¬ 
adelphia and so forth. In Chicago there are 500 churches 
but there is only one city government. 

Secondly the fundamental principle of the Christian 
Church was that of a brotherhood so broad as to include 
men of all ranks, of all conditions, of all nationalities. 
The City government more than any of the churches is 
based on just such a recognition of human brotherhood. 
In the citizenship of Chicago as in the old Christian 
Church, there is neither Greek, nor Jew, bond nor free, 
Barbarian or Scythian, all are one before the ballot box. 
Only in one respect does it fail to come up to that 
Christian ideal. Chicago is not yet sufficiently civilized 
to recognize the citizenship of women so that part of the 


*It cannot be too often insisted upon that however great may be the shortcom¬ 
ings of the city government the churches cannot dissever themselves from a large 
share of responsibility in the matter. What is the use of lamenting the absence of 
a strong sense of civic religion if the official ministers of religion seldom or never 
preach or teach the religious aspect of municipal or social duties? What is the 
use of deploring the indisposition of competent and leisured men to undertake the 
irksome and uncongenial work of municipal administration when those whose 
special duty it is to rouse the conscience of the community never preach the 
dedication of the citizen to municipal work as one of the most important and 
most sacred means of helping to bring in the kingdom of Christ on earth? What 
conception of civic religion is possible to the ordinary man if on the eve of 
municipal elections the church takes not the slightest pains either to urge the 
best men into the field, or even to impress upon her congregations the importance 
of electing the best men from the candidates before them? If the churches are 
the divinely appointed instrument for carrying out the divine will in the affairs of 
this world in Chicago, it would seem as if either God had forsaken His church 
or His church had forsaken Him. 



The Church Catholic and Civic 277 

text which says “in Christ neither male nor female,” 
does not apply here. 

Thirdly, the City government recognizes as does no 
other organization in Chicago, the great truth that the 
community is one body of which we are all members and 
that if one member suffers, all the other members suffer 
likewise. This sense of interdependence results from 
the fact that the evolution of the social organism is much 
further advanced on the municipal side than on any 
other. The conception, however Christian, has made 
more advance under the aegis of the municipality than 
under the dome of any Christian temple in Chicago. 
Those who doubt this should compare for the moment 
the different way in which a material evil is handled by 
the municipality and a moral evil by the various 
churches. Nothing is more inspiring than to see the 
way in which the conception of the unity of the social 
organism operates under the city government. It is 
tested by the outbreak of a fire. A drunken tramp 
drops a match in the outhouse of some miserable shanty 
in the outskirts of Chicago. The straw alights and the 
fire blazes up. The nearest patrolman who sees it 
hastens to his patrol box and sends in a fire alarm. 
Instantly in every police station, and newspaper office 
throughout the 190 square miles within the city limits 
that alarm is reproduced and almost before the patrol¬ 
man has quitted the patrol box the fire engines are 
clattering along the streets from the nearest stations to 
extinguish the fire. Should the wind be high and the 
flames baffle the efforts of the local force, fresh alarms 
are sent in and instantly more fire-engines and firemen 
are dispatched, until in case of need the whole resources 
of the city in apparatus and in men will be concentrated 
upon the point of danger. There is no question as to 
rich and poor, no discussing in police stations or at the 
fire department as to whether or not the locality was a 
long way off or what might be its ratable value or any¬ 
thing else. There is fire and there is need and that is 


278 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

enough. The whole machine splendidly equipped in 
perfect discipline, acts almost automatically on any 
appeal from any section of the community. 

Contrast this, where we have the social organism 
functioning at its best under municipal guidance and 
direction, with the way in which the ecclesiastical 
churches act, when some moral pestilence which it is 
no exaggeration to compare to an outbreak of hell-fire, 
takes place in any quarter of the town. To begin with 
there is no special patrolman to give the alarm, and if 
there were, there is no arrangement by which the cry 
could be heard, let alone be heard instantaneously 
throughout the churches of Chicago. But supposing 
that by some telepathic miracle, the spiritual watch¬ 
man could sound his warning note in the ears of all the 
churches, how many of them would respond? Some 
would shrug their shoulders and say it was outside their 
parish, others would remark that it was among the 
Catholics and not for their people, others again that there 
were no Catholics in the region, but they were all Jews 
and that they ought to look after themselves. As a result 
of this refusal, born not of selfishness or of cruelty, but 
due simply to the fact that the evolution of the Christian 
ideal of the unity of the social organism has not yet 
attained so high a point in the churches as it has done 
in the municipality. 

Fourthly, the City government is organized upon the 
simple democratic basis which was natural to the com¬ 
pany of fishermen whom the carpenter of Nazareth 
selected as the nucleus of His church. Whatever may 
be the faults of the City government, it is simple and it 
is close to the people. No social and ecclesiastical hier¬ 
archy stands between the common people and their elected 
representatives any more than there was between the 
early believers who gathered together after the day of 
Pentecost and those whom they appointed to dispense 
charity and to serve tables. The poor man, the laborer 
rude and uncultured feels more at home in the City Hall 


The Church Catholic and Civic. 279 

than he would in most of the wealthy churches in the 
city of Chicago. 

This it may be said is only theory. But the fact is, that 
the City government is much more like that early 
Christian Church than the existing Christian churches 
which claim to be its direct descendants. This is largely 
due to the success with which the early Christian Church 
and its medieval successors Christianized the whole con¬ 
ception of secular government. 

The moment you begin to study the state from a his¬ 
torical point of view, and trace the origin of the insti¬ 
tutions which we now possess, you are brought sharply 
face to face with the fact that the modern state, espe¬ 
cially the modern municipality, is very largely the heir 
and acting legatee of the mediaeval church. That is to 
say, many of the functions which the City Council has 
to perform were in old times the exclusive work of the 
church. Not many centuries ago it would have been 
blank heresy in the eyes of churchmen, and absurdity 
in the eyes of statesmen, to assert that much of the work 
discharged by the City Council could possibly be 
entrusted to any body excepting the religious orders, 
the monasteries, and other ecclesiastical authorities. 
That is to say, according to the old conception of the 
functions of church and state, the City Council, and the 
County Commissioners, from the work which they per¬ 
form, are quite as much Church as State, for they perform 
duties and accept responsibilities which for centuries 
were regarded as the exclusive prerogative of the Church. 

Take, for instance, the care of the poor. This was in 
early times regarded as the province of the church. 
Pure religion and undefiled was defined by the apostle 
as consisting in the first place in providing for the 
fatherless and the widow. This function, however, is 
no longer entrusted to the ecclesiastical organizations. 
The fatherless and the destitute today, are sent to 
Dunning, or to some other institution, which, whether 
it is governed by the City Council or the County Com- 


280 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

missioner, is a secular institution doing distinctively 
Christian work. 

Take another instance. The hospitals were founded by 
the church, and for hundreds of years were exclusively 
maintained by the church. Today there are still hospi¬ 
tals in connection with various churches,but the greatest 
hospital of all is a County institution, and its manage¬ 
ment is in the hands of the elected representatives of 
the people. The same is true concerning prisoners 
whether it is in the Bridewell, the Penitentiary or in 
other places wherein these wards of the state who have 
forfeited their liberty are kept in temporary servitude. 
The work of redeeming and reclaiming those wandering 
ones is left to the state, it is no longer the prerogative of 
the Church. 

Education is another great department which in 
early times used to be regarded as much the right 
and duty of the Church, as the conducting of divine 
worship is today. That also has passed into the hands 
of a secular board appointed by the Mayor, who is 
elected by the citizens of Chicago. Another institution— 
the Public Library—which mankind has come to regard 
as indispensable, formerly had no existence save in the 
monasteries. Now it is domiciled in the City Hall, and 
cared for by the civic authorities. 

Cleanliness which is next to godliness, has entirely 
passed under the control of the City which supplies the 
water, superintends the drainage, and is responsible for 
the removal of those physical causes which contribute 
so much to the moral degeneration of the people. In 
fact, the more closely it is examined, the more clearly 
will the facts stand out that if any of the great saints, 
who, a thousand years ago Christianized and civilized 
Europe, were to come to Chicago, they would, after sur¬ 
veying the whole scene, decide that three-fourths at 
least of the work which they did was in the hands either 
of the City Council, the Mayor or the County Commis¬ 
sioners, and that not more than one-fourth remained in 


The Church Catholic and Civic. 281 

the hands of the clergy and their so-called church. The 
state, or rather the city, has become the executor of the 
church for three-fourths of the work which the church 
was instituted to accomplish. This is right enough, for it 
is the duty of the church ever to press forward, and when 
it has Christianized the community sufficiently to entrust 
any of its own duties to the elected representatives of the 
people, there is always more work to be done further 
afield. But the responsibility for the due discharge of 
all these functions of which it has relieved itself remains 
with it intact yet. 

But unfortunately no sooner does the church rid itself 
of the onerous responsibility with which it was formerly 
saddled, than it seems to abandon all care or interest in 
what used to be its own special work, and what was hereto¬ 
fore regarded as distinctly Christian work, is often handed 
over to men who have not the slightest trace of Christian 
principle. In this respect the church behaves not unlike 
the unfortunate mother of an illegitimate child, who, find¬ 
ing it irksome any longer to maintain her offspring, 
hands it over to a baby farmer, and thanks God she is 
well quit of her brat. Everyone knows what results fol¬ 
low when the baby farmer is substituted for the mother 
as the custodian of the infant. Much the same results 
follow in the secular sphere when the moral influence 
of the Christian Church is withdrawn from the bodies to 
which it has been handed over the duties formerly dis¬ 
charged by the church. 

Yet it is not only the theory of its constitution 
and the actual work with which it is entrusted that the 
City government would lead the steps of our Lord to 
the City Hall. He came to earth to seek and to save 
those who are lost, to deliver the oppressed and redeem 
mankind from the evils which afflict them. In His 
progress through this city many sad and grievous sights 
must have afflicted Him whose eyes are too pure to look 
upon iniquity; but when He had made his sad pilgrimage 
through our streets, and considered how best to deliver the 


282 If Christ Came to Chicago . 

least of these His brethren from the afflictions with which 
they are encompassed, He would find no agency in the 
whole city which was capable of coping with the evils 
in question, excepting the City government. The 
ecclesiastical churches, even if they were filled with His 
love and inspired by His spirit, could no more remove 
those evils than a sunbeam can drive a locomotive. 
What are these evils? There is the injustice by which 
the rich, who are strong, and are able to bear the bur¬ 
den of taxation, transfer hundreds of thousands of dol¬ 
lars to the shoulders of those who are poor, and not able 
to support so heavy a tax. That can only be dealt with 
through the legislature, and by the elected representa¬ 
tives of the people. There is the evil of corruption 
established as monarch in the center of the civic admin¬ 
istration, while aldermen like servile courtiers fawn 
around his throne for sops which are purchased by steal¬ 
ing the heritage of the poor. That evil also can only be 
attacked at the primaries and the ballot boxes. 
Whether we are dealing with the tramp or with the 
willing but workless worker it is by politics, through 
politics and in politics that the work of redemption must 
be wrought. Gamblers, open their trap doors to per¬ 
dition in our streets; it is the duty of the police to close 
them. The insanitary precinct, where the children of 
the poor are reared under conditions which defraud them 
of their natural inheritance of health, and the prospect 
of happiness belongs also to the municipality. The 
predatory rich can only be kept in order by the same 
agency. In fact the way of deliverance from most of 
the evils which afflict the community, must be sought 
through the City Hall, rather than through the direct 
agency of any of the churches of the town. 

Hence I think that from whatever point we approach 
the question we shall arrive at the same conclusion, if 
Christ came to Chicago, the center from which He 
would work to establish His kingdom here and now in 
the city of Chicago, would be the City Hall. 


CHAPTER III. 

MAYOR HOPKINS. 


Few things impress a visitor from England more 
than the dearth of leaders. Next to the distrust which 
people have of each other, this phenomenon impresses 
the stranger most unfavorably. The lack of leader¬ 
ship is, perhaps, the natural Nemesis of a people which 
has forgotten how to trust. But the conditions of society 
are rapidly compelling even the most indifferent of these 
Anarchists of Comfort to see that society will not get on 
much longer without leadership. Hero worship is 
innate in the human mind. Not even the feverish tem¬ 
perature of the Board of Trade can banish that original 
instinct from the heart of man, although the ambition 
to lead is singularly absent among the natural leaders 
of the Democratic society. 

Nevertheless, here as elsewhere, in the wise leadership 
of the preoccupied many by the capable few lies the hope 
for the future. The majority of men or women, whether in 
democracies or aristocracies, do not think for themselves. 
They have not the mind in the first place and would not 
take the trouble if they had the mind. The wise, the 
thoughtful and the men of character and initiative are 
always in a very small minority, but it is that minority 
which rules, and must rule if the state is not to drivel down 
to a heap of ruins. The supreme merit of Democracy is 
not that of permitting every Tom, Dick and Harry to 
steer the ship according to the untrained unwisdom of 
the forecastle, but because it gives the one capable man, 
whether he be in the forecastle or in the forecabin, a 
chance of proving his capacity and obtaining possession 
of the helm. 

Conspicuous among those who have arisen to do battle 

283 


284 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

in the popular cause against the tyranny of the corpora¬ 
tions and the scandalous corruption which honeycombs 
civic life in America, is a sturdy New Englander, who is 
now serving for the third time as Mayor of Detroit. Hazen 
S. Pingree, like most of the men who have contributed 
largely to the building up of the middle and western 
states, is from the east coast. He did not come over with 
the Mayflower, for the historic vessel had made her epoch- 
making trip fourteen years before Moses Pingree settled 
in Massachusetts. England was at that time just foam- 
fretted from end to end with the beginnings of a civil war 
which was not to end until Charles Stuart’s head fell be¬ 
neath the headsman’s axe, and Moses Pingree brought 
over with him the Puritan hatred of tyranny and all 
unrighteousness. Hazen Pingree, the present Mayor 
of Detroit, was born on a farm in Maine in 1842. 
When fourteen he left the farmstead and began to 
serve his time in a shoe factory in Massachusetts. 
When the war broke out he was twenty years old 
and was the first volunteer from the village in 
which he was working. They talked of buying him 
off, but he laughed the proposal to scorn. “ Who 
would not 'give a farm to be a soldier ? ” he said, a saying 
which, being repeated, passed from mouth to mouth and 
acted as one of those potent suggestions kept up the 
morale and re-enforced the ranks of the Army of Emanci¬ 
pation. Pingree, who possessed a strong constitution, 
fought through the whole war from Bull’s Run to the 
collapse of the Confederacy with the exception of 
six months which he spent as a prisoner of war in 
Andersonville. 

After the war was over he came to Detroit and re¬ 
sumed work in a shoe factory. After a time he saw 
an opportunity of beginning business on his own ac¬ 
count in a small way, and from that moment he never 
looked behind him. Keen business instincts, united 
with a sterling honesty which was universally recognized 
by his customers, and the rapid growth of the north- 


Mayor Hopkins. 285 

western states, combined to make him the owner of the 
largest shoe' factory west of New York. He settled 
down, married, and became a comfortable citizen, full of 
restless energy. He built up a considerable fortune and 
furnished a mansion, every room of which bears testimony 
to the culture and refinement of the Detroit cobbler. Not¬ 
withstanding his business he made time for travel, visit¬ 
ing Alaska on the one hand and all the picture galleries 
and museums of Europe on the other. His drawing¬ 
room contains some of the gems of European art, 
trophies of his continental expedition, while the library 
is full of choice and well-thumbed books. 

There was great dissatisfaction in Detroit in 1889 owing 
to the corruption and mismanagement which prevailed in 
the municipality. An influential deputation of citizens 
waited upon Mr. Pingree and begged him to accept a 
nomination to the mayoralty. Up to this time he had 
been engrossed in business and had given but cursory 
attention to the management of the municipal affairs. 
He hesitated, then refused, but finally was induced to 
stand. He threw the whole of his irresistible energy into 
the campaign and was elected by a majority of 2,318. He 
is a Republican, but he speedily made it known that in 
the City Hall, partisan politics were to be severely sub¬ 
ordinated to the public good. As soon as he en¬ 
tered office he saw that it would be impossible to 
do anything in the perfunctory fashion which had 
previously prevailed. The Mayor of Detroit in those 
days did not come down to the City Hall till half past 
eleven, where he spent half an hour in signing docu¬ 
ments and then for the rest of the day went about his 
private business. Mayor Pingree changed all that. 
He went down immediately after breakfast and stayed 
there till six at night. He ran the city in the same 
businesslike fashion in which he had previously man¬ 
aged his shoe factory. 

As soon as he grasped the situation he found that he 
was confronted by a corrupt Council, whose members re- 


286 if Christ Came to Chicago. 

garded their position as chiefly valuable for the oppor¬ 
tunity which it afforded for selling public franchises. 
He found the streets practically handed over to the dom¬ 
ination of the street railway companies, while the mur¬ 
derous grade crossings of the steam railways were in¬ 
creasing and multiplying to the peril of the citizens and 
the continual interruption of public traffic. The 
tax-dodger flourished and by so doing laid the greater 
proportion of the burden of taxation on the poorer classes. 
The town was being spiderwebbed with wires, notwith¬ 
standing an ordinance which had been passed, but never 
enforced, compelling the electric lighting, telegraph and 
telephone companies to place their wires under ground. 
The gas company was in full possession of the munici¬ 
pality, it charged the consumers $1.50 per thousand 
feet and acted in the usual high-handed fashion of gas 
companies in similar positions. Valuable franchises 
were given away without compensation. The electric 
light company rendered shamefully inadequate service; 
and in short, Mayor Pingree found Detroit suffering from 
all the evils which afflict Chicago and most American 
cities. The city, instead of being governed in the interests 
of the citizens, was practically farmed out to corporations 
who were about as honest as the farmer generals in 
France before the French revolution, and who had as 
much regard for the welfare of the people as distinguished 
a hungry Roman proconsul just appointed to fatten upon 
the wealth of a conquered province in Asia. Seeing 
which Mayor Pingree took off his coat, turned up his 
sleeves and set to work. 

It is not necessary to describe here the details of that 
great fight which began in 1890 and is still going 011. 
It is a campaign in which all the glory and most of the 
triumph has been on the side of the Mayor. He is a 
silent man of as much pertinacity as the taciturn general 
who led the armies of the Union in triumph to the rebel 
capital. In his first message he announced that the 
time had come for the city to assume control of the public 


Mayor Hopkins. 287 

lighting and own and operate its own plant, in order that 
it might escape the caprices of tyrannous corporations. 
After a prolonged struggle with the city railway com¬ 
panies he brought them to their knees, and only this year 
he has achieved a brilliant, although not decisive victory 
in the law courts to which he had appealed against their 
franchise. The net value to the city of the judicial 
decision, if confirmed by the Supreme Court, is not 
less than $5,000,000. This, although the latest, was by 
no means the first of his encounters with street railway 
companies. He had given them a taste of his quality by 
refusing to call out the militia to shoot down their em¬ 
ployes* in a strike which took place soon after his election. 
Instead of calling out the militia he wrote a strong letter 
to the company counseling a resort to arbitration. His 
advice was followed under duress and the strike ceased. 
The principle of arbitration then established has been in 
operation ever since, and when I was in Detroit this year 
arrangements were being made for the reassembling 
of the Arbitration Board for the settlement of a question 
which had arisen as to a proposed reduction in wages. 

He fought the gas companies and compelled them 
to reduce their rates from $1.50 to $1, with a prospect 
of a still further reduction to 80 cents. The quality of 
the gas was improved, meters were protected against 
fast running, and no extra charge was to be made for their 
use. The gas company was not allowed to destroy the 
pavement in laying its pipes, as all gas pipes had to be 
laid in alleys whenever possible, and gas mains were to 
be extended on the petition of one consumer for every 
100 feet. Detroit, like Chicago, is debarred by its char¬ 
ter from owning its gas plant and the gas companies 
were not brought to their knees without a severe fight, 
in which the police, acting under orders of the Mayor, 
arrested the gas men who were tearing up the streets in 
defiance of the city authorities. 

The most sensational incident which attended his 
fight needs to be told at a little greater length. From his 


288 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

first entering office the Mayor had set his heart upon 
municipal electric lighting. After infinite trouble in 
getting permission from the Legislature for the munici¬ 
pality to operate and own its own electric light plant, he 
was disgusted to find that the corrupt members of the 
City Council, disregarding the permission given them by 
the State, had passed an ordinance handing over the elec¬ 
tric lighting of the city to a private corporation in almost 
as cynical a fashion as the majority in the Chicago Council 
passed the Watson Gas Ordinance. The Mayor promptly 
vetoed it with as much emphasis as Mayor Hopkins. 
The boodlers of Detroit had either more nerve or were 
in greater need of money than those of Chicago, for a 
two-thirds majority was prepared to pass the ordinance 
over the Mayor’s veto. Mayor Pingree was in despair. 
But light arose in the midst of darkness. An hour or two 
before he had to go down to the City Council to assist as 
an impotent spectator at the triumph of the boodle, an 
Alderman presented himself at the Mayor’s house. He 
stated that an agent of the electric light company had just 
been to see him. They were rather anxious about their 
majority and they wanted another vote. The Alderman 
replied he was not going to vote for the ordinance. The 
agent assured him that they would make it worth his 
while to pass the ordinance over the Mayor’s veto. On 
asking what he meant he was told that if he voted for the 
ordinance he would receive $800, in proof of which he 
handed him there and then $200 on account in hundred- 
dollar bills. The Alderman, wisely dissembling, ac¬ 
cepted the money, thanked the gentleman and hurried 
down to the Mayor, in whose hands he placed the $200. 

With a light heart, notwithstanding the fire which 
burned within, and with victory in his eyes, Mayor Pin¬ 
gree drove down to the City Hall. The Council was 
assembled. The ordinance was about to be passed over 
his veto. Just before the roll was called the Mayor rose. 
Amid the dogged and mutinous silence of the bood¬ 
lers the Mayor, as his habit is, plunged into the 


Mayor Hopkins. 289 

middle of his subject. “ Before you vote for the 
ordinance I wish to inform you that I am well 
aware that illicit means have been employed to secure 
your votes. In fact I hold in my possession two 
hundred dollar bills which were this very day handed 
over to an Alderman whose vote the electric light com¬ 
pany wished to purchase in support 0/ this .ordinance. 
This $200 was a twenty-five per cent instalment of 
the total sum to be paid for that vote.” A murmur of 
alarm ran through the Council and one or two of the 
bolder members ventured to cry, “ Name ! Name ! ” 
“ Yes,” said the Mayor, “ I can name him : he is Aider- 
man so and so,” naming his informant. “ He will testify 
that it is true. Here are the $200 which he has handed 
me. It is impossible to believe that he is the only Aider- 
man who has been approached. Now gentlemen, let us 
call the roll.” Consternation is a mild word to express the 
dismay which was depicted on the faces of the boodlers. 
The blow struck by the Mayor hit the Aldermen between 
the eyes and when the roll was called they simply 
bolted. The Mayor’s veto was sustained, and as a 
result Detroit expects to be the best and most econom¬ 
ically lighted city in the whole of the United States. 
Success was gained in this case by the opportune dis¬ 
covery of legal provable facts as to the boodling that 
was practiced in the Council. From that time forth the 
Mayor has gone on conquering and to conquer. 

He is bent at the present moment upon giving the 
inhabitants of Detroit free water, founding a citizens’ 
street railway company which is to construct and 
operate street railways in certain streets in Detroit 
under conditions the most onerous which the wit 
of man can devise. The franchise is to be forfeited 
whenever any of these conditions are ignored. Girder- 
grooved rails have to be used. The roadway between 
the tracks is to be repaved. No overcrowding is to be 
permitted in the cars, which have to be of the most ap¬ 
proved design for service and for comfort. The fare is 


290 If Christ Caine to Chicago. 

to be twenty-five cents for eight tickets, carrying right 
of transfer within the city limits. The street rail¬ 
way company is to pay from $1,500 to $6,000 a mile on 
tracks paved and railed by the city, and the corporation 
is to deposit $10,000 in cash as a security for the com¬ 
pletion of the trolley system. The City Council is to have 
the right to purchase it at valuation to be fixed by arbi¬ 
tration at the expiration of fifteen years, or to take over 
the whole plant, exclusive of rolling stock, free gratis 
and for nothing, at the end of twenty-five years. 

I went over to Detroit in order to see this champion of 
the rights of the common people against corporate tyr¬ 
anny. I found Mayor Pingree a solid, stalwart, reso¬ 
lute man, who has established a reputation of being as 
immovable as the Rocky Mountains in all cases where 
public interests conflicted with the claims of private 
speculators. No one can move him when once he sees his 
objective and he goes for it with an irresistible dash and 
keeps up the momentum of the charge until his enemies 
are scattered like chaff before the wind. He is a terror, 
is Mayor Pingree, a terror to evil-doers and hated accord¬ 
ingly by all that class. Notwithstanding the opposition 
of all the monopolists and all the corporations he has 
twice been re-elected, and each time by a larger majority. 
If ever there was a man who sits firm in the saddle and 
rides his steed with a steady hand Mayor Pingree is that 
man. Senator Palmer, whose family has been so long 
connected with the city, said that there was no doubt 
that Mayor Pingree was absolutely incorruptible and that 
he was consumed with an unquenchable zeal for the pub¬ 
lic service. “There is no doubt,” said Senator Palmer, 
“ that he has succeeded in making a stand which has 
given him a position very few men hold in the Union ; 
and I am not afraid to say that if the Republicans are 
likely to have a hard fight for the next presidential elec¬ 
tion Mayor Pingree might be the strongest candidate 
whom they could put into the field. He is a strong man 
who stands for a principle which is likely to come to 


Mayor Hopkins. 291 

the front more and more and I am not by any means sure 
that his nomination would not be good party policy.” 

Into such lofty regions I do not venture to intrude. 
All that I know is that Mayor Pingree is an honest man, 
fighting a heroic battle against immense odds, and en¬ 
compassed by a host of enemies who have spared no 
effort in order to ruin him both financially and politic¬ 
ally. The extent to which this is carried may be in¬ 
ferred from the fact that last year an Alderman in the 
City Council, who had supported the Mayor’s reforming 
policy, was waited upon by an influential deputation, 
including, I am sorry to say, some leading members of 
St. John’s Episcopal Church in Detroit, who gave him 
to understand, without ceremony, that he must either 
quit supporting the Mayor, or abandon his seat in the 
Council or make up his mind to be ruined. The Aider- 
man was a plumber with one of the best businesses in 
Detroit. As a high-class plumber his business connec¬ 
tion lay chiefly with the rich people, and on looking 
into the matter he saw that the members of the depu¬ 
tation were perfectly able to make good their threat 
in case he did not oppose the Mayor or abandon his 
seat in the Council. The Alderman came down to 
Mayor Pingree with tears in his eyes and told the 
story. “ What can I do ? ” he said. “ I am over 
60 years of age, my business is worth $25,000. I shall 
lose it all if I remain in the Council and support you, 
as I must if I sit there. The only thing that I can do 
is to resign.” And resign he did. It is a curious in¬ 
stance of the modern tyranny of the predatory rich that 
not one paper in Detroit would publish the truth about 
this Alderman’s resignation for the information of the 
citizens. 

Mayor Pingree is a Republican, who has no bitterer 
enemies than some of the Republicans in Detroit. 
Mayor Hopkins, who was elected last December as the 
successor of Mr. Carter Harrison in the mayoralty of 
Chicago, is a Democrat, and unless all appearances are 


292 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

misleading, is likely to find liis worst enemies among 
men of his own party. That, however, is all in the day’s 
work and must be expected. But just as Mayor Pingree 
has made reputation for the Republican party in the 
Union at large, so Mayor Hopkins may become one 
of the elements which contribute to the national 
strength of the Democratic party. Mayor Hopkins 
has the advantage of Mayor Pingree in being a 
younger man. He is the youngest Mayor that Chi¬ 
cago has had, with one exception, and he was elected 
by the heaviest vote which Chicago ever cast for a chief 
magistrate. There is much in his career to fascinate the 
imagination, and if he should continue to progress as 
rapidly as he has done up to the present, the story of 
his early life and his rapid rise is likely to figure in the 
school books of the English-speaking race side by side 
with the story of how Abraham Lincoln from a rail 
splitter became President. To an Englishman the pos¬ 
sibility of so sudden a promotion from the ranks to one 
of the foremost positions in the Republic is one of the 
few elements of romance and of charm in American 
politics. The fact that the man who, the other day, 
was working as a lumber shover or a day laborer, should 
now be autocrat of the capital of the New World, is a 
distinct contribution to the romance of contemporary 
history. The Arabian Nights element is always the 
most interesting in history of nations and individuals 
and there is a great deal of the Arabian Nights element 
in the rapid rise of Mayor Hopkins. 

John Patrick Hopkins was born in Buffalo. He was 
educated in the common school, and was the third son 
of a family of twelve. His father and his brothers are 
dead, and when quite a boy his sisters had to take to 
dress making in order to keep the family in bread and 
butter. As soon as he left school, which he did at a 
comparatively early age, he set to work to earn his 
living. His first place he found for himself. He 
started in life by heating rivets in an iron foundry. 


293 


Mayor Hopkins. 

From there he went to work in the Evans elevators 
and by the time he was twenty had established a 
good enough reputation for regularity and industry to 
be appointed weighmaster of the place. When he was 
twenty-one he came to Chicago, the city which fourteen 
years later was to elect him to the highest office in its 
gift. For four months he looked around. He fixed 
up his sisters in dressmaking business, and then started 
out to look for work for himself. He was not quite 
twenty-two when he went down to Pullman and asked 
the superintendent of works for a job. In reply to the 
question of what he could do, he replied that he would 
do anything. Being asked if he meant what he said he 
was taken at his word. The superintendent was rather 
pleased at his determination to try his hand at whatever 
turned up, and sent him to shove lumber down in the 
yards. There he worked as an ordinary laborer for some 
months, until he had satisfied the management that he 
had good stuff in him which could be better employed 
elsewhere. Whatever may be said concerning the 
autocracy which Mr. Pullman has established in the 
city which bears his name, no one can deny that the 
autocrat and his agents have a keen eye for capacity, at 
least up to a certain point. Mr. Hopkins’ career illus¬ 
trates this. In August, 1880, he was called into the store¬ 
keeping department. The April next year he was 
appointed timekeeper in the store ; in the following 
August he became general timekeeper. Two years later 
he was made paymaster by Mr. Pullman. 

But notwithstanding his rapid promotion and the 
responsible position which he occupied as paymaster of 
the great industrial army which recognizes Mr. Pullman 
as its captain general, Mr. Hopkins was singularly inde¬ 
pendent. It used to be said of him in those days that he 
was the only man in Pullman who dared to call his soul 
his own. He was a Democrat, although Mr. Pull¬ 
man was a Republican. He was young, a comparative 
stranger, without capital or resources of his own, but 


294 


If Christ Came to Chicago. 

not content with his position of salaried employe, he 
went into business on his own account in the Arcade. 
A friend of his who knew him at Pullman, and to whom 
I applied for some information of those early days and 
of the struggles by which Hopkins established his repu¬ 
tation, wrote me as follows : 

This Arcade is one of the original and peculiar institutions of the 
little manufacturing city of Pullman, which is now, much against Mr. 
Pullman’s will, part of the great metropolis of Chicago. It is a 
big, red structure with passage-ways running north and south 
and east and west throughout and on either side booths and shops. 
In the upper stories there is a small theater, a public library, offices 
and flats. In one corner of the main floor is the Pullman Savings 
Bank, through which the pay-roll runs and which is ready to care for 
the deposits of the workingmen. There is no other place in the set¬ 
tlement where shops other than groceries and markets can be kept, 
and those are for the most part centered in one great market building, 
modeled after the same plan. It is possible for the company to dic¬ 
tate in these matters, as it controls every inch of the ground, and not 
even the streets have been dedicated as public highways. It has its 
own hotel, which has always lost money for the company, but which 
is sustained for the convenience and gratification of the officials and 
especially Mr. Pullman. Even the church is the property of the com¬ 
pany. The Catholics were indeed after a long time permitted to build 
on consecrated ground, but before they were given a deed it is said 
that a priest who had espoused the laboring men’s side in a great 
strike had been compelled to resign. However that may be, it is sure 
that the reverend father without any apparent reason did fold his tent 
and desert his flock against their protests and despite their tears, leav¬ 
ing another to finish the church which he had begun. 

This was before I came to Pullman, and I speak therefore only by 
hearsay. But John Hopkins had been the companion of the reverend 
father in guilt and his resignation had been demanded as a punish¬ 
ment for the crime of openly sympathizing with the workingmen. It 
was forthcoming without a murmur, and after a little time spent in 
silence and without either suing for restoration or complaining, the 
young man was invited to return and his demand for a largely in¬ 
creased salary was granted. It was Pullman’s first surrender. But 
the fact was that it was not easy for any one to fill young Hopkins’ 
place ; he knew Ole Olson in the brick-yard and Ole Olson in the 
foundry, and he never forgot either or mistook one for the other. So 
much of his work was in this way personal that the conveniences for 
a merely mechanical system of paying were not at hand and his suc¬ 
cessor made a sad botch of it. Besides, the absence of swagger or 
bitterness on the young man’s part was a strong recommendation for 
a new trial; but, state it as you will, it was a great victory for the 
mayor-to-be, then little more than twenty-five years old. A similar 
victory was afterwards scored by a young man named Harper, who 
served as chief accountant, and was discharged for insubordination 


Mayor Hopkins . 295 

and requested to return after a time to straighten out a set of books 
which some of the best experts in Chicago had failed to decipher. He 
was really a wonderful accountant, whose equal I have never known ; 
and what because of this and what, because of a fellow-feeling for him, 
Mayor Hopkins has chosen him to unravel the muddle at the City 
Hall, a task which he seems to be performing with perspicuous ability 
and great dispatch. But though Mr. Pullman restored both of these 
gentlemen to their positions without requiring an apology and with 
increased salaries, he did not fail to place persons with them to learn 
the work so as to supplant them, and each found a short shift for 
himself as soon as the powers felt able to dispense with his services. 
Perhaps this may have been apparent to John Hopkins all along, and 
may have had much to do with his indifference. 

Politics was the cause of war. If there was anything which Mr. 
Pullman could not endure, it was stiff-necked rebellion politically. 
Like so many American manufacturers, he had come to think protec¬ 
tion a necessity to his business, support of it loyalty to his interest 
and that of his employes, and voting the wrong way in some manner 
a treachery unpardonable. But the imperturbable paymaster merely 
smiled in his usual confident and provoking way, and proceeded to 
do his best to carry Pullman for the Democratic ticket. 

It was not an easy thing to do. The people were accustomed to sub¬ 
serviency, and yet more so since the unsuccessful strike referred to in 
the foregoing. But Hopkins was indefatigable, and he knew 
Ole Olson in the brick-yards and Ole Olson at the foundry—in short, 
he knew them all. To be sure, they worked for the Pullman Com¬ 
pany. Doubtless largely because of their admiration for the brave fel¬ 
low who had stood unabashed and victorious before the company, they 
did give a considerable Democratic majority in spite of the ever- 
increasing rumors of official vengeance. Really, by his words, his 
magnetic presence and, yet more, by his example, Hopkins brought 
manhood and courage to the surface in men who never gave any 
signs of either before and have since lapsed into the old, lack-luster, 
subservient mode of life. 

This was too much, and the brilliant young paymaster had to get 
out without ceremony: and (whether as a fearful warning or not I 
cannot say) fourteen hundred others, to a man Democratic voters, 
were sent out too. The reason assigned was lack of work. As a Re¬ 
publican victory had been scored in the nation, this could hardly be 
ascribed to their future votes. But to an outsider it seemed as if the 
company, by one fell blow, thought to make such things impossible 
for the future. Not only was the leader but the flock as well this time 
driven out of the gates. As before there was not a word of complaint 
from the imperturbed young paymaster, who only entered a formal 
protest when the rent was suddenly and greatly increased on the 
store-rooms occupied by himself and partner in the Arcade. Amid 
the sneers of the company and its satellites, he prepared to remove 
his business to Kensington, and for that purpose pushed, with true 
Chicago enterprise, the construction of a new store building. 

He established himself in “ Bumtown,” on the outskirts 
of Pullman, which had been abandoned to saloon keepers 


296 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

and disreputable houses. His advent changed everything. 
His store was a wonderful success. His wagons delivered 
goods in Pullman, for the autocracy of the company 
could not be stretched so far as to prevent its late paymas¬ 
ter from using the public thoroughfare. Mr. Hopkins is 
still in litigation with the company to recover the exor¬ 
bitant rent exacted from him. He has also had more 
than one opportunity since becoming Mayor of making 
it even with his adversaries. Not that there is any 
trace of bitterness in him ; no one could be more smiling, 
affable or debonair. But he has not lost a chance since 
he arrived of reminding the public of the seamy side of 
the Pullmam administration, whether in gas or in water 
or of the district containing 100,000 population on the 
boundaries of Pullman which has not yet been provided 
with a common sewer, owing to the opposition of the 
owners of real estate in the neighborhood. 

Mr. Hopkins was always a politician but he was twenty- 
seven years old before he was appointed to an office. 
The position which he held was that of Treasurer to the 
village of Hyde Park. Two years later he endeavored to 
obtain the nomination to the National Democratic Con¬ 
vention. As usual with young aspirants he had to fight his 
way to recognition. He was defeated in 1888, but he made 
so plucky a fight against Mr. Green that his standing in 
the party was recognized without further hesitancy. He 
was placed on the committee and in the presidential cam¬ 
paign Pullman was delivered ever to his hands by the 
Democrats. It was Mr. Hopkins who first startled the 
Republican close borough by a torch light parade 
through the streets and by this and other electoral sensa¬ 
tions he achieved a victory which startled everyone. The 
next year he followed it up by a municipal success quite 
as notable, for as Chairman of the Annexation Committee 
he played a leading part in adding 225,000 population to 
Chicago. Among the towns annexed, Hyde Park was 
one of the most important, and the Pullman Company 
had the chagrin to see their estates annexed to the city 


Mayor Hopkins . 297 

of Chicago against their opposition. After this he be¬ 
came President of the Cook County Democracy. He 
took the boys down first to Springfield and then to 
Washington. His name was first coupled with the 
mayoralty in February, 1890, when with a thousand 
members of County Democracy Marching Club he went 
down to Des Moines to attend Governor Boies’ inaugura¬ 
tion. Hopkins, who has an extraordinary memory for 
names, resembling therein the Queen and Mr. Gladstone, 
who are said never to forget a name they have once heard, 
presented each member of his thousand marching Demo¬ 
crats, and it is said that he never made a mistake in the 
name of a single individual. Mr. Hopkins having com¬ 
plimented Governor Boies on his gray hair, the Governor 
replied, u By the time you have hair like mine I trust 
you will be Mayor of Chicago.” Not a single streak was 
visible on the Mayor’s glossy raven locks when Governor 
Boies’ prediction was fulfilled. Mr. Hopkins went every¬ 
where with the marching club. “ He would always 
wear a plug and carry a cotton umbrella like the rest of 
us,” said one of the members, “he never made an enemy 
in this club.” He was never absent from one of the fif¬ 
teen funerals which occurred during his membership and 
he was just as punctual in attending inaugurations, rati¬ 
fications and celebrations of all kinds ; indeed, the County 
Democracy Marching Club may be said to have been the 
creation of Mr. Hopkins. It is remarkable that he should 
have held his own as its chief and trusted captain, for he 
never drinks, and many of the marching Democrats need 
to be well primed before the parade. He was always 
pleasant and genial to everyone, never forgot any¬ 
one’s name and was always in his place when expected. 
All this time he was building up a big business. He en¬ 
tered upon other work, dealing with street cleaning and 
street work, and he had become a very substantial citi¬ 
zen. All his mind was concentrated on business and 
politics. He took no part in society, although he be¬ 
longed to several clubs. He spent most of his time in 


298 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

his store or at home with his mother and sisters. He 
dressed well and kept in well with the influential people, 
including President Cleveland, who last year appointed 
him receiver of the Chemical Bank, the duties of which 
responsible post he discharged with the vigor and dis¬ 
patch which characterize all his actions. 

When Carter Harrison was shot and the election was 
ordered to be held for the appointment of his successor, 
there was no intention on the part of the official gang in 
the County Democracy to run Hopkins. They would 
willingly have nominated one of themselves, but Mr. Hop¬ 
kins came in and said he wished the nomination, and all 
opposition went down before him. He does not owe 
anything to the party managers unless it may be a few 
grudges, which he will probably pay off in due time. 
He refused absolutely to make any pledges or to bind 
himself to any course, but insisted on having his hands 
free in case he were elected. With many a wry face his 
rivals bowed to the inevitable and Mr. Hopkins entered 
for the campaign against Acting-Mayor Swift. It was 
hot and furious while it lasted, but so far as Mr. Hop¬ 
kins was concerned the contest was not characterized by 
any asperity, nor did he commit himself recklessly in his 
election pledges. The policy of the party was defined 
in a manifesto which compared very favorably with the 
singularly barren and jejune production which emanated 
from the Republican Committee. His portrait was in 
every saloon and in a great many other places besides ; 
for Mr. Hopkins is a presentable looking young man, 
whose countenance is good to look upon. In the end he 
was elected by a majority of over 1,200. 

No sooner was the Mayor in the saddle than he began 
a campaign which bore the strongest resemblance to 
that of Mayor Pingree in Detroit. He addressed himself 
to the elevation of the grade crossings, ordered a list of 
the killed and wounded to be made up and read to the 
Council at their meetings. He prepared himself for a 
battle royal with the boodle element in the Council, 


299 


Mayor Hopkins. 

which he saw would endeavor to use the attempt to ele¬ 
vate the tracks as a means of levying blackmail on the 
railways in order to embarass him in his enterprise. 
Finding the city hopelessly behind in its finances he cut 
his own salary ten per cent and insisted on a general reduc¬ 
tion all round. He surrounded himself with competent 
and public-spirited advisers and began a systematic 
inquiry into all the abuses which have disgraced the 
city. Comptroller Ackerman drew up a report upon the 
scandalous system of assessments, which is the dis¬ 
grace of Chicago, and the report was published to the 
dismay of all the tax dodgers of the community. He 
took energetic measures against the street railways to 
compel them to fulfill their obligations in repairing the 
tracks, in paying the license duty and in discharging the 
other obligations which they owed to the city. 

His first battle with the Council took place over the 
Northwestern Elevated Railway Ordinance, which the 
Aldermen had passed, it is said, in return for $1,000 a 
vote, for making an elevated railway to the northwest. 
The Mayor vetoed the ordinance because it did not 
secure any return to the city in the shape of a per¬ 
centage upon the gross receipts. His veto was sus¬ 
tained. The ordinance as amended provides that the 
city shall share in the gross profits of the railway. A 
committee was appointed to inquire into the unau¬ 
thorized encroachments on the public domain by steam 
railways, with results which are not a little surpris¬ 
ing to the public and disagreeable to the railroads. 
He stopped the disgraceful system of levying fees 
for inspection. He waged war against the system of 
collecting and retaining the taxes by which collectors 
were able to pocket scores of thousands of dollars which 
ought to belong to the public, and generally set on foot 
an investigation of the shady places of the city adminis¬ 
tration. By a ukase he peremptorily suppressed the 
raids for revenue upon houses of ill fame, which 
have been the scandal and the disgrace of Chicago for 


300 If Christ Came to Chicago . 

many years, and ruined at least for a time the business of 
the professional bailer and the justice of the peace. In 
dealing with the police his avowed policy has been to 
remove the police from politics, but the temptation to 
avenge himself on his adversaries was too strong to 
enable him to carry out that programme in its entirety. 
Captain Shippy disappeared, Captain Mahoney was re¬ 
duced and Inspector Ross compelled to resign. There 
was no attempt to justify these acts, other than upon 
political grounds. 

Mr. Hopkins’ great fight, however, was waged with 
the boodle gas ordinance. For a whole week the victory 
was in dispute, nor did anyone know to which side it 
would incline. At the Council meeting Mayor Hopkins 
launched one of the strongest messages which has ever 
been addressed to such a body. His veto was sustained, 
although forty-two members of the Council voted in its 
favor while only twenty-two voted against it. He was 
saved from defeat by the defection of a certain number 
of Republican Aldermen. The Democratic boodlers 
stood firm, with the result that the Mayor’s next task is 
the ridding of the City Council of the presence of the 
corrupt members of his own party. 

Personally Mr. Hopkins impressed me very favorably, 
partly, I must admit, at first on account of his resem¬ 
blance to Cecil Rhodes, the Prime Minister of South 
Africa. Cecil Rhodes is the ablest man in the British 
Empire from the administrative point of view, and if 
Mayor Hopkins is anything like Cecil Rhodes he will 
not stop far short of the presidential chair. He is, how¬ 
ever, younger than Mr. Rhodes and of a more nervous 
temperament. When he presides over a Council meet¬ 
ing his fingers are continually playing with his mallet, 
and at times even this method of disposing of his surplus 
energies fails and he gets up and walks backwards and 
forwards like a caged lion on the raised dais on which 
the mayoral chair is placed. He may get over this 
when he grows older, otherwise it will wear him down, 


Mayor Hopkins. 301 

for the Aldermen are a tough crowd and he has a very 
long row to hoe before he gets to the end of his job in 
Chicago. He is a demon for work, and his constitution, 
which has not been impaired by any excess either in 
drink or tobacco or other forms of dissipation, will stand 
a much greater strain than would ruin the strength of 
most of his opponents. There is a joyous elan about 
him which will stand him in good stead. He has not 
been elected three months, but he has established a repu¬ 
tation in Chicago which no other man possesses, and it 
is admitted reluctantly, even by those who are opposed 
to him, that if he were to stand on an independent 
ticket he would be elected Mayor at present by a majority 
of three to one. “ He has a spine like a telegraph pole,” 
exclaimed a banker, admiringly, after reading the mes¬ 
sage on the boodle ordinance. It would be difficult to 
describe more picturesquely the kind of backbone which 
is needed by a man in Mayor Hopkins’ position. 

Mr. Hopkins is not an orator, but if he were to take 
a little more trouble he would be able to excel as much 
on the platform as he does in administration. There is 
a bonhomie about him which is attractive to the 
masses, and he is quite Bismarckian in the reckless can¬ 
dor with which he expresses his opinions. He is not a 
scholar nor a student of books. He reads the news¬ 
paper, and he lives in the midst of his fellow men. His 
vernacular is expressive and at times vigorous. When it 
was told him that Andrew Foy, a City Hall employe, 
was refusing to support his wife, who, had borne witness 
against him and Coughlin in the Cronin trial, he told 
him he would have to quit if he did not support his 

wife. “I will be d- if I will have a man in the 

employ of the city who will not support his family.” 
Mr. Hopkins is perhaps a trifle vindictive, but in the 
campaign on which he has entered if he will but qualify 
his vindictiveness by a large magnanimity he may find 
that part of his nature an element of strength. He has 
got an Augean stable to clear out and many of the other 



302 if Christ Came to Chicago. 

labors of Hercules to put through. He will need all his 
youth, all his strength and all his good temper and all 
the support of the honest citizens. His experience at 
Pullman shows that he is capable of fighting a winning 
fight against apparently hopeless odds. He will have 
against him every scoundrel who is fattening on the 
plunder of the poor. He will also have to face the 
determined opposition of the so-called respectable citizens 
who have profited and are now profiting by the success 
with which they have avoided the proper share of their 
civic obligations. But as Mayor Pingree said to me, “ I 
could never have succeeded if I had not thrown myself 
upon the people, and at every crisis in the struggle 
appealed to the people to support me in the campaign, 
and they have never failed in Detroit.” Neither will 
they in Chicago if Mayor Hopkins but sticks to his 
guns and trusts the people to help him to carry their 
cause to victory. 


CHAPTER IV. 

BISHOP BRENNAN AND HIS SECULAR CEERGY. 

“Give me control of the police force,” said Commis¬ 
sioner of Police Sheehan of New York, “and I do not 
care a tinker’s damn who has the majority of votes.” 
I was told much the same thing in Chicago. “Do not 
make any mistake,” said one of the leading business 
men in the town, “Mr. Hopkins may be mayor but the 
people who run the town are the police. They are on 
deck when the captain is in the cabin and it depends 
upon them far more than upon him what kind of govern¬ 
ment we have got.” Government by police is hardly 
an ideal system of administration, but it would not be 
so bad if it were not permeated through and through 
by the influence of politics. The policeman is a good 
servant but a bad master, and he has all the faults of 
the tyrant and all the vices of the slave when he at the 
same time lords and tyrannizes over the people and is 
compelled to cringe before the pull of the political 
boss. 

One of the planks of the Democratic party which 
carried the mayoral election for Mayor Hopkins was 
that the police should be taken out of politics. It can 
be done no doubt, but the process is very much like 
taking a man out of his skin, and so far there does not 
seem to be very much evidence that the operation has 
begun. The first act of Mayor Hopkins was to dismiss 
Inspector Ross,who was supposed to have been Mr. Swift’s 
candidate for the chieftainship of the police. His 
second was to reduce Captain Mahoney because, as the 
aggrieved officer put it in his letter to Mr. Hopkins, 
“At the special election for mayor I exercised my right as 
an American citizen, entitled to the suffrage in voting 
for the choice of my party, and in my humble opinion, 
303 


304 if Christ Came to Chicago. 

for the best man for the position.’’ Captain Mahoney 
said he failed to see how Mayor Hopkins was 
fulfilling his pledge to take the police out of politics by 
reducing him in position. That is because Captain 
Mahoney is somewhat dull of perception and fails to 
appreciate the humor of a position which is really very 
humorous although it was somewhat tragic for him. 

I asked Farmer Jones what he thought of the way in 
which Mayor Hopkins was fulfilling his election pledges 
in this matter of the police. “He is all right,” said 
Farmer Jones, “there is nothing the matter with him.” 
“But,” I said, “he is only firing out Republicans, and 
is that not a rather peculiar way of divorcing the police 
from politics?” Farmer Jones looked at me curiously 
and then said with somewhat of his old smile lingering 
in the corner of his eye: “It is all right. This is one 
of the first steps which must be taken towards that end. 
You see that the Democrats believe that the police can 
be divorced from politics, the Republicans do not, 
therefore the Republicans will do all they can to make 
the experiment of a non-political police a failure. To 
give it a fair chance therefore it is absolutely necessary 
to clear all the Republicans out of the force in order 
that the police divorced from politics may be worked 
by those who believe that there ought to be no politics 
in the police force,that is to say by Democrats. Otherwise 
this reform would have no chance at all.” Farmer 
Jones, it will be seen, has in him the making of a 
famous casuist, but the Mayor, fortunately, has shown 
no sign of going to the lengths which Farmer Jones’ 
apology would justify. 

The ideal before Mayor Hopkins, as indeed before 
everyone else in Chicago, is the Fire Brigade. Fire 
Marshal Swenie has remained in command of the fire¬ 
men for many years and the administration of the de¬ 
partment has been conducted on business principles, 
with results in efficiency which are a standing reproof 
to every other department in the city. As the necessity 


Bishop Brennan and His Secular Clergy . 305 

of rescuing at least one department of the administration 
from the all pervading pestilence of party politics was 
burned into the mind of Chicago by the great fire it 
almost seems as if it would require a similar cautery 
to brand upon Chicago a similar conviction in relation 
to other departments. Even with the memory of the fire 
fresh in the minds of the citizens Mayor Cregier was so 
unmindful of it that immediately after his election he 
proposed to replace Fire Marshal Swenie by a creature 
of his own. The way in which he was restrained from 
doing so was told me by Mayor Hopkins. As soon as 
it was known in the city that the Mayor was going to 
apply the spoils system to the fire department, a dep¬ 
utation of fire insurance men waited upon Mayor 
Cregier. Their communication was brief and to the 
point. They said, “Your Honor, we are only citizens 
engaged in the fire insurance business, we have nothing 
whatever to do with the distribution of the mayor’s 
patronage, and if you dismiss the Fire Marshal that is 
your business with which we cannot interfere. Our 
business is to make rates at which we are willing to take 
risks on the insurance of property against fire. The 
moment the Fire Marshal goes the rates upon all 
descriptions of fire risks will go up 25 per cent.” The 
deputation then withdrew but the Fire Marshal retained 
his position. 

Chicago appreciates an argument which can be stated 
in percentages payable in dollars. Chicago is not 
yet sufficiently alive to arguments which relate to the 
administration of justice, to the prevention of crime and 
to the repression of vice. These things are important, 
no doubt, but negligence in their enforcement does not 
entail an immediate money fine upon the respectable 
citizens. Were it not so they would make their police 
as non-political as their firemen. 

The Chief of Police in any city corresponds more 
nearly to the early ideal of a Christian bishop than any 
modern prelate. If his manifold functions are looked 


306 If Christ Came to Chicago . 

into it will be found that there are few people who de¬ 
serve to be regarded as the true episcopus or overseer than 
does Chief Brennan. His jurisdiction is limited to the pre¬ 
vention of sin in the comparative and superlative degree; 
when sin becomes vice or develops into crime then it 
demands the attention of the Police Bishop of the 
city. Day by day in the New World as in the Old 
the tendency is more and more to saddle the police with 
ever increasing duties, responsibilities and obliga¬ 
tions, thereby increasing the resemblance which the 
police bears to the medieval bishop. Indeed the 
moment the idea is suggested to anyone analogies crop 
up in all directions. Chief Brennan does not wear a mitre 
or grasp a crozier. He does not even wear a helmet and 
his uniform is the reverse of conspicuous, but in his inner 
sanctum he reigns like a prince-bishop of the olden 
times over the whole of his diocese of Chicago. His 
inspectors are his suffragans, his captains are his deans, 
his lieutenants his canons, while the patrolmen who 
every day and night keep ceaseless watch and ward 
over the city constitute his secular clergy, sturdy and 
stalwart specimens of the church militant containing as 
is wont with all human institutions a fair share of 
recruits from the Devil’s Brigade. 

It is a thousand pities that a force which should be 
allowed to perform its arduous and responsible func¬ 
tions with a single eye to the enforcement of the law 
and the maintainance of order should be perpetually 
interfered with by the politicians. It is quite incred¬ 
ible—the extent to which this system is carried. Over 
and over again I have had to ask myself whether I was 
really in an American city or whether I had been 
spirited away and dropped down in some Turkish pasha- 
lik so entirely has the very conception of impartial 
justice died out in the police courts of Chicago. That 
is a strong statement to those who do not know Chicago 
but those who know the city will only wonder and be 
surprised that I should regard it as a subject interesting 


Bishop Brennan and His Secular Clergy. 307 

enough to be talked about. I might as well discuss the 
rising or the setting of the sun or the order of the equi¬ 
noxes. These things happen they say, but as no amount 
of talking will stay the equinoxes, or delay the rising and 
the setting of the sun so no amount of discussion or 
denunciation can cause justice to be administered in 
Chicago without fear or favor. The mayor, the aider- 
men, the saloon keeper, the heeler, everybody in fact 
who is anybody or anything in Chicago has got a “pull” 
when justice is to be administered excepting that 
abstract entity justice herself. Justice has no “pull.” 

There is no secret about this in the force. The men 
talk quite freely about it on their beats and as it is with 
the patrolman so it is with those much higher in station. 
There is no secure reward for ability and the most faith¬ 
ful service counts for nothing compared with the ascend¬ 
ancy of the spoils system. As Major McClaughry the 
late Chief of Police in Chicago said bitterly to the chiefs 
of police assembled at Bloomington: 

If the policman resists all the temptations which beset him he nas in 
most cases, under our admirable system of city government, the prize 
set before him of being abused and hounded and misrepresented, and of 
being turned out to graze the moment there is a change of adminis¬ 
tration, either in the ward in which he resides or in the city govern¬ 
ment, of which he forms apart. 

But it is not worth while dwelling here upon the way 
in which the spoils system spoils the men who admin¬ 
ister it. That is an old story. What is not so familiar 
is the extent to which politics interfere not only with 
patronage but with the actual administration of 
justice from day to day. One night as I was returning 
from Harrison Street police station to my hotel I ran 
across an elderly policeman who belonged to the first 
precinct. The conversation which took place left 
a deep impression upon my mind. I had said 
something about the infamous system by which the pro¬ 
fessional bailer and the justice of the peace drew fat 
revenues by levying legal blackmail on the unfortunates 
in the streets. The policeman said, “There are no 


308 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

greater robbers in Chicago than you will find at the 
police stations.” 

He said they were all robbers at the police station, the 
justices, the bailsmen and everyone else. But he added, 
“That is not the worst of it, politics are in everything 
and they poison everything. The police department and 
the administration of justice ought to be taken clean out 
of politics altogether. It just tires us out seeing how 
everything we do is brought to naught by politics. ’ ’ 

I asked “How?” 

“Well, ’ ’ he said, “every justice is a political man and he 
is under the thumb of the alderman and the politician. 
The bigger the thief the greater the politician and the 
more influence he has in Chicago. A tough who is al¬ 
ways prominent at ward meetings and fights for the can¬ 
didates of his party gets the protection of his party. Hence 
we may arrest him red-handed and take him to the 
police station; in a very short time he will march out 
having the laugh on us. ’’ 

“How is it done?” I asked. 

“Oh, the charge will be reduced from larceny to dis¬ 
orderly conduct by discretion of the judge who will then 
fine him $50 or $100 but before our backs are turned he 
will suspend the fine, that is to say he will remit it. 
The whole system of suspending or as you would say 
remitting fines is bad. It is simply that a fine which is 
imposed according to law is taken off according to 
politics. Politics rule everything and no one in the 
force dare go against an alderman. If I saw a man com¬ 
mit a robbery now and I arrested him and if that man 
were in politics I would be a fool not to let him go, 
because he would at once appeal to an alderman who 
would see that he got off. Some men are so dull-headed 
they cannot take a hint. I thought once that it was 
my duty to arrest a thief even if an alderman were his 
friend but I always found that I got the worst of it in 
the long run. It is that which spoils us. When you have 
a clear good case against a man and work hard to get 


Bishop Brennan and His Secular Clergy. 309 

him to the police station you are horribly discouraged 
when you find that all your labor is thrown away because 
your prisoner is in politics. It is politics every¬ 
where and justice takes a back seat to politics. For 
instance if an alderman came along here and struck 
me across my face with his fist I would be a fool to 
arrest him unless I wanted to be fired out of the force.” 

Repeating this conversation in another police station 
on the other side of the river an officer who was present 
said he thought the patrolman had exaggerated some¬ 
what, for his part he remembered that an alderman was 
once arrested in Chicago. 

“When?” I exclaimed. 

“Well,” said he, “it was a very long time ago,” so 
long indeed that he was not able to settle a date. I 
asked the policeman from the first precinct whether he 
would give me specific instances. “Instances!” ex- 
clained he, “oh, every Tom, Dick and the devil know 
about that. Go down any day and see it for yourself.” 

Without for a moment admitting that the whole 
administration of justice in the justice courts of Chicago 
is as hopelessly rotten, the chances of the conviction of 
a political offender in Chicago are slender enough in¬ 
deed. The law, even when it is honestly administered 
without its being rendered unworkable by the interfer¬ 
ence by people with pulls is very faulty. The system 
of taking appeals is simply licensed larceny, for this the 
law is to blame not the police or the justice. For in¬ 
stance: Jacob Mendelsshon, late chief clerk in Justice 
Foster’s court, said last winter: 

“If the legislature would amend in some way the law relating 
to appeals in city cases it would do good. For instance, if a thief 
is fined $100, $11.50 will get him out of the trouble. He appeals from 
the decision of the justice, puts up $11.50, has a bond signed and then 
is on the streets again, and this is the last of the case. Only yester¬ 
day two women were fined $100 and costs each for nearly stabbing a 
man to death because he would not give them any money. They 
appealed the case, paid $ 1 1.50, and were at liberty again in ten min¬ 
utes. The justices are not to blame for this state of affairs. 

Under the circumstances it is a marvel that there is so 


310 If Christ Came to Chicago . 

little serious crime in the city. Over and over again 
when I have reflected upon the way in which justice is 
outraged in her very courts, and when I see how the ad¬ 
ministration has been poisoned with political prejudice 
and twisted everywhere by the zeal of faction, I have 
marvelled that society does not show a much greater de¬ 
moralization. Nearly everything happens that ought 
not to happen, and yet things go on fairly well. The 
administration of justice is carried on in a hugger-mugger 
fashion in a hurley-burley almost inconceivable to those 
who are accustomed to the graver and more serious 
methods of the Old World. I sat on the bench at the 
Harrison Street police station beside Mr. Justice Brad- 
well for an hour one morning, and could not help smil¬ 
ing at the rudeness of the accommodation which was 
provided for the magistrate and his assistants, and the 
extraordinary way the accusers and accused were thrust 
almost like a flock of sheep into a pen in front of the bar 
of the court. 

As might be expected peijury is regarded as a very 
venial offense by many policemen in Chicago. This is 
the besetting sin of the police all the world round. 
There is a tendency in every policeman to hold that the 
end justifies the means, and when a police officer is 
quite sure that he has got hold of a crook he feels that it 
would be almost a mortal offence not to strengthen his 
evidence by a little hard swearing if the occasion 
demands it. A prosecution of a policeman for perjury 
would be almost inconceivable in Chicago.* To such 
an extent has this been carried that one judge in 
Chicago, Goggin, by name, has on more than one 
occasion astonished the court by dismissing all prisoners 
against whom there was nothing but police evidence. 


♦Writing on this subject the Chicago Herald of December 29 makes the 
following emphatic assertions: “ The courts of Chicago have been defiled by re¬ 
peated police outrages. Wherever members of the force have had a personal or 
factional interest in causes undergoing judicial scrutiny it has been repeatedly 
shown in evidence that officers tampered with witnesses, secreted or distorted or 
manufactured testimony, conspired for or against a defendant, and did not hesitate 
at rank peijury to accomplish an unjustifiable end.” 



Bishop Brenna?i and His Secular Clergy. 311 

On January 25, on releasing a man on habeas corpus, 
Judge Goggin said: 

“The carelessness and irregularities in procedure observed by the 
Police Department are very great. Many of the officials are either 
entirely ignorant of the first element of law or else do not take the 
trouble to proceed in a legal manner. I am inclined to think that 
the members of the city prosecutor’s staff who attend the police courts 
are not careful, or else I would not have continually to release pris¬ 
oners.” 

The fact of the matter is, as Judge Goggin very well 
knows, the police are a law unto themselves, and have 
the very scantiest respect for any law which they can 
evade without getting themselves into, trouble. One 
great cause of this is that the city ordinances are so far 
in advance of what is attempted to be done that a po¬ 
liceman naturally feels that he can pick and choose. 
The Municipal Code is very strict. Section 1790 runs as 
follows: 

“Any member of the police force who should neglect or refuse to 
perform any duty required of him by the ordinance of the city or the 
rules and regulations of the department of police, or who shall in the 
discharge of his official duties, be guilty of any fraud, extortion, op¬ 
pression, favoritism or willful wrong or injustice, shall forfeit and pay 
a penalty not exceeding one hundred dollars for each offence. 

Under this ordinance every policeman might be fined 
$100 every day from the highest to the lowest for there 
are municipal ordinances by the dozen which are never 
enforced at all. Whether it is in relation to the saloon, or 
the gaming house or the house of ill-fame every member of 
the police neglects to perform the duties required of him 
by ordinance and therefore he has very little of the 
reverence which policemen in other countries imper¬ 
ceptibly absorb for a law which is inexorably enforced. 
Every policeman has more or less discretionary 
power to suspend the law in individual cases, just as 
a justice of the peace has to suspend a fine at his own 
caprice. The way in which this works is obvious, it 
works directly in the levying of black mail. 

Hence the duty of the police in Chicago is two¬ 
fold. He is a representative of the majesty of law 
and he does not bear the sword, or to translate it 


312 if Christ Came to Chicago . 

into tlie vernacular, his staff, in vain. He is also the 
representative of his own interests and of the modus 
vivendi which has been established between the 
disorderly classes and the authorities. In his first capac¬ 
ity he has his duty clearly marked out for him, he 
must be upright, incorruptible, just and vigilant in the 
enforcement of the law, but in his second capacity he is 
left to the resources of his own mother wit. The 
policeman divides his time in unequal proportions 
between keeping a sharp eye upon every evil doer whom 
he must arrest and in winking both eyes hard when he 
comes across those other evil doers who have either in 
money or in ‘ ‘pull’ ’ established their right to be invisible 
to the patrol. Such a position is enough to demoralize 
a saint and although the majority of the Chicago Police 
are recruited from the Isle of Saints, the family of Saints, 
as Mark Twain said of the descendants of Washington 
who could not tell a lie, “has dwindled much of late. ” 

There are refinements in the black mailing trade which 
are not suspected by the public. Take for instance the 
following story told by Mr. Supt. Byrnes of New York 
as to the way in which certain policemen under his con¬ 
trol are blackmailing the peddlers who sell fruit, fish and 
vegetables in the open market which is held in Hestor 
street at the east side of New York: 

It seems each of the several policemen employed an agent, and 
the latter informed the peddlers that every Friday they would have to 
pay him 50 cents or $1 or more, according to the location of their push¬ 
carts. The policemen on post demanded these sums, the agent averred 
and if the peddlers desired to do business they would have to pay for 
the privilege. Then, when Friday came around, the agent would start 
to make his rounds. The policeman was sometimes a yard back of 
him, but as often alongside, walking with him. From one peddler to 
another they would go, the agent taking the cash and the policeman 
counting it. Sometimes a peddler would refuse to be blackmailed, 
and then his stand or cart would be kicked into the street, sometimes 
all its contents—the poor fellow’s stock in trade—being overturned 
and destroyed by falling into the mud. 

If that can be done to peddlers who are driving a 
legitimate trade, it can fairly be assumed that every 
immoral resort, whether it be a low drinking saloon, an 


Bishop Brennan and His Secular Clergy. 313 

opium joint or a house of ill-fame, yields a steady revenue 
to the policeman on the beat. Nor is it only the patrol¬ 
man who levy irregular fines upon the outlaws of society, 
the captains at the police stations have a touch upon the 
houses and collect their money in large sums. They 
have had great trouble at the Harrison Street police 
station, I was assured at police headquarters by the 
way in which the superior officers had succumbed to the 
temptation of feathering their own nests in this fashion. 
A captain who had plundered the district very badly 
was removed and one who was supposed to be a reformer 
was placed at his desk. As often happens the little 
finger of the reformer was heavier than the loins of the 
unregenerate whose place he has taken. The new man 
levied blackmail so constantly and in such large quan¬ 
tities that human nature could stand it no longer and 
the Madames of Fourth Avenue rose up and protested 
against being bled so unmercifully. “D— you,” said 
the officer, when he received their complaints/ 4 what are 
you made for but to be plundered?” That is the police 
theory stated with cynical brutality and acted on more 
or less constantly day in and day out every 24 hours in 
the 365 days in this year of grace. 

Another mode by which the police augment the 
slender income of $1,000 a year allowed them by the 
city, is by going shares with bondsmen. A young lawyer 
in the town told me an incident in his own experience 
which brings out the modus operandi very clearly. I 
do not give his name, but he is personally known to 
the mayor and may be found any day at the City Hall. 
My friend was one of a party making the round of the 
opium dens under the guidance of a couple of detectives 
in the district where they are thickest, that is to say 
between Michigan Avenue and Clark Street in the 
neighborhood of 12 th Street. They had gone from 
one house to another, seeing a great number ot 
American citizens in various stages of opium intoxica¬ 
tion. As they were rounding up their tour their 


314 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

guides decided to take them to just one more joint before 
they went home. On entering it the detectives discov¬ 
ered to their surprise a well known crook whom they 
had been seeking for in vain and whom they had now 
found quite inadvertently. The doors were instantly 
guarded, the patrol wagon was called and the whole 
joint was raided. Every individual from the proprietor 
downwards was put in the wagon and carted off to the 
police station. There were more than would fill one 
wagon so they had to wait for it to return when they were 
all taken to the Harrison police station, including the two 
detectives and my friend. On their way the detectives 
stopped and roused up a professional bailer. The man 
got out of bed and came down. He was told he was 
wanted at the station as they had just raided a joint. 
“All right,” he said, “I will come along directly,” and 
leaving him to complete his toilet, the party arrived at 
the station where they promptly lodged their captives in 
the cells. Soon after in came the professional bailer and 
bailed out all those who could put up any money for 
their bail bond. As soon as the little ceremony was 
over and the justice had profited to the extent of 
a dollar a head on the issue of the bonds and the 
professional bailer had pocketed his money he went 
back to his saloon accompanied by the two detec¬ 
tives and my friend who wondered somewhat at what 
was to happen next. He did not have long to wait, for 
no sooner was the party ensconced in the saloon than a 
vehement discussion arose as to the extent to which the 
detectives were to share in the bail money. The contro¬ 
versy waxed hot and my friend had no difficulty in 
hearing the whole of the discussion. Ultimately a divide 
was agreed upon. Each of the detectives received $10 
for his share in the raid while the bailer kept the rest. 
This kind of thing goes on constantly wherever there is 
discretion left in the hands of the police officer as to 
whether or not the law shall be enforced. Out of that 
discretion the policeman coins money. 


Bishop Brennan and His Secular Clergy. 315 

The policeman has many privileges in Chicago, includ¬ 
ing many other things a discretionary right to kill. In 
the equipment of a Chicago policeman, one indispensable 
item of expense is $11 which he must pay fora first class 
service revolver, and this revolver is bought for use and 
not for show. It is his own property, and he has a right 
to do with his own what he likes, even to the extent of 
firing promiscuously at any citizen who does not choose 
to obey his summons to halt. Chief Brennan assured me 
that the shooting was greatly exaggerated, and that a 
great many more shots were fired at the police than what 
they returned. There is a good deal of shooting, how¬ 
ever, anyway, as was brought pretty forcibly to mind 
the other day, when one of the best known officers in 
the force was shot by his comrade who was endeavoring 
to allay a drunken brawl in a disreputable dance house. 

Chief among the great temptations which confront the 
policeman are the allurements held out to him by the 
saloon-keeper, the courtesan, the dishonest pawnbroker, 
the shrewd gambler and the cunning thief. 

It is difficult if not impossible to devise any expedient 
whereby this vice can be eradicated. Indeed if the 
policemen of Chicago flourish upon black mail, it is not 
because he is driven to it by poverty. There is no 
salary paid in the whole force under $2.00 per day and 
as soon as the officer becomes valuable as a patrolman, 
he receives $1,000 per year; out of which, he pays 1 per 
cent to the Pension Relief Fund, and 2 per cent more 
to the Benevolent Association, which provides for him 
in case of sickness. * 


♦New York has 41^ square miles of territory and 3,800 men. They are paid: 
Chief, $6,000; inspectors, $3,500;captains, $2,750; sergeants, $2,000; roundsmen, $1,300; 
patrolmen, first year, $1,000; second year, $1,100; third yeai and thereafter, $1,200. 

In Boston 906 men police 58 square miles of territory. There the patrol men are 
paid $1,000 the first year, $1,100 the second year, $1,200 the third. Brooklyn has 26 
square miles of territory and 1,225 men. Brooklyn patrol men are paid $900 the first 
year, $1,000 the second year, and $1,100 the third year and thereafter. 

In San Francisco the police territory covers 41^ square miles and is guarded by 
457 men. The chief receives $4,000 a year: captains, $1,800; clerks, $1,800; detectives, 
$1,500; sergeants, $1,500; corporals, $1,404; first class patrol men, $1,224. From his 
salary $2 per month is deducted for the pension and relief fund. 

The policemen in Philadelphia, St. I,ouis, Cincinnati and Denver, are paid as in 
Chicago, but in those cities the uniforms are furnished. 



316 If Christ Came to Chicago . 

This compares disadvantageous^ with the salary of 
policemen in other great cities of America; more 
especially as the policeman in Chicago has to provide 
his own uniform. One outfit costs him close upon $100. 
The force is unprovided with police surgeon, and if he 
is sick he is docked of his pay. His hours are longer 
than those which are put in by the New York police, 
for the eight hours system has not yet been adopted by 
the Chicago police. At night he puts in nine hours; by 
day he puts in twelve; whether by night or day he 
always puts in seven days per week. 

The City Authorities in Chicago in drawing up the 
regulations for the police have evidently arrived at the 
conclusion that Col. Ingersoll should revise and extend 
his lecture “On the Mistakes of Moses” in order to 
draw special attention to the great mistake made by the 
Hebrew Law-Giver in insisting upon one day’s rest in 
seven. The Chicago authorities know better than that. 
Moses may have been right about the Jews of his time, 
but the patrolman, who is constantly on his beat in the 
“Windy City” stands in no need of Sunday rest! 

Considering the immense expense of territory that 
is patroled by the police, and considering the nature 
of the population that is congregated into the heart of 
the city, it must be admitted that Bishop Brennan 
and his secular clergy have their diocese very well in 
hand. Mr. Brennan declares that there is less crime 
in Chicago than any other city in proportion to its 
population, and you may certainly wander unmolested 
through the league-long avenues and boulevards, and 
also through the more disreputable districts in the first 
ward without being conscious of the near proximity of 
some of the dives and crooks with whose exploits the 
police reporters keep the public so well informed. 

If the police were divorced from politics, and if Chief 
Brennan were to show that he would prove as capable 
in his own department as Marshal Swenie was in the 
campaign against fire, the force might enter upon a 


Bishop Brennan and His Secular Clergy. 317 

new and happier era as a result of the election of Mayor 
Hopkins. But Mr. Brennan is an anxious, somewhat 
timid man who is mistrusted by many on account of 
his connection with the Clan-na-Gael, and it is yet 
to be proved that he is quite equal to the exigencies of 
the situation, which would try the resources of the 
ablest man, who ever wore a uniform. Still we can 
hope for the best, and Mr. Brennan, if he is allowed a 
free hand, will probably do a great deal better than even 
an angel from Heaven if the angel were liable to have 
his wings pulled every now and then by the Mayor 
on the one hand and the Aldermanic Hierarchy on the 
other in the interest of political partisans. 



CHAPTER V. 

HOW THE ORACLE IS WORKED. 

“Vox populi , vox Dei" is an old adage not much 
respected in great American cities, where Lincoln’s 
noble prayer at Gettysburg for the success of the great 
experiment of government of the people, by the people 
and for the people, does not seem to elicit a loud “Amen.” 
Leading citizens in Chicago have repeatedly assured me 
that there is no hope and no future for the city of 
Chicago under the system of popular government. To 
abolish the whole system of administration, stock, lock 
and barrel, and to place the city under a federal triumvi¬ 
rate, appointed from Washington, who would govern 
Chicago as Washington is governed, is one favorite 
specific. To make the Mayor a Democratic Caesar is 
another proposal. Universal suffrage is roundly declared 
to be a failure, and the whole hope of improvement is 
said to be the abandonment of the Democratic principle 
and the adoption of some form or other of one man 
power. 

All that is of the devil, and those who think to make 
a short cut to the millenium by using the scepter of the 
despot are on the broad road that leadeth to destruction. 
Democratic institutions are all right, and would work all 
right if the people who are talking about their future 
would only take ordinary trouble to see that they worked 
right. The people’s instincts are sound, and their inter¬ 
ests are those of the community. But in order to give 
them a fair chance, they should not be left to the uncove¬ 
nanted mercies of the boss and the heeler. Those who 
have principle, education and wealth should go into 
politics and consult the oracle themselves, instead of 
leaving the divine voice to be misinterpreted by thievish 


319 


320 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

hierophants of that polling place, that modern cave of 
Delphos. 

The custody of the Delphic cave is left to two sets of 
partisans, respectively known as Republicans and Demo¬ 
crats, who instead of really desiring to know what the 
sovereign people have to say, concentrate all their efforts 
upon the supreme duty of working the oracle so as to 
make each deliverance tell against their adversaries and in 
favor of themselves. That is all they care for the welfare 
of the city. The future of the millions it will contain are 
as dust in the balance compared with the great object of 
getting an advantage honestly or otherwise over the other 
side. Thus there has come into existence in the party 
organizations a new and hideous dual form of the old 
plague of legitimate right. No Bourbon was more sure 
of his right divine to govern wrong than an American 
party manager is of his right to subordinate every con¬ 
sideration, divine and human, to the interests of his 
faction. 

The result works out very disastrously in the cities 
when the welfare of the greatest of modern communities 
is sacrificed remorselessly to the exigencies of a national 
policy absolutely foreign to the questions which are of 
life and death to the people of Chicago. 

One of Tom Moore’s familiar fables for the Holy 
Alliance describes how a Scythian Philosopher who 
strayed into the temple of Memphis— 

“Saw a brisk blue-bottle Fly on an altar, 

Made much of and worshipped as something divine; 

While a large, handsome Bullock, led there in an halter, 

Before it lay stabbed at the foot of the shrine.” 

Surprised at such doings, the Philosopher inquired why 
such a useful and powerful creature should be thus 
offered up to a blue-bottle fly. He was told— 

* ‘ That Fly on the shrine is Legitimate Right, 

And that Bullock the people that’s sacrificed to it.” 

If our Scythian could come to Chicago to-day he would 
see the same marvelous sight, but in this case there are 


How the Oracle is Worked. 


321 


two flies on the shrine, and they are the rivals Republi¬ 
canism and Democracy. Opposed to each other in every 
point, they agree in demanding the sacrifice of all other 
interests before the shrine, where they keep up their 
eternal feud. 

What is wanted for Chicago is the election of the best 
men regardless of party strife. Whenever votes are 
given to the worse candidate for the city because he be¬ 
longs to the better party from the point of view of the 
nation, the bullock is offered to the blue-bottle fly. Chi¬ 
cago’s good government, Chicago’s welfare should not 
be subordinated to the interests of the party caucus. 

Here in Chicago, for instance, the looseness of the regis¬ 
tration laws, the reckless facility with which anybody and 
everybody is registered as a citizen, is a direct encourage¬ 
ment to those vulgar Catilines to aspire to pack not a pri¬ 
mary or a ballot box, but the register of the electorate. 
To put matters simply, registration in Chicago is a farce. 
Any naturalized citizen can vote, and anybody and every¬ 
body can be naturalized as a citizen if they are males over 
twenty-one years of age. All the careful stipulations of 
the laws to insure a due term of residence and an 
acquaintance with the principles of the American Con¬ 
stitution * are brushed to one side as so many spider 
webs. I am unfortunately not able to remain in Chicago 
till the April election. Had I done so, I am assured by 
an ardent politician that he would guarantee to qualify 
me if I would be a safe vote for Bath House John. I 
do not see why every English-speaking man should not 
be recognized as being naturalized by virtue of his 
speech wherever he is on English-speaking land. But 
so long as the distinction is kept up between the subjects 

* A story which Americans love to tell as illustrating the process of naturaliza¬ 
tion, is as follows: An Irish politician brought in a foreign voter to be naturalized. 
In reply to the question whether the applicant had read the American Constitu¬ 
tion, his sponsor admitted that he had not. “ Until he has read it,” said the judge, 
“we can not make him a citizen.” Pat retired with his candidate for citizen¬ 
ship, but in five minutes they were both back before the judge. “ Well,” said the 
ruler, “ has he read the Constitution?” “Indade, he has, your honor,” said Pat, 
“and he thinks it a damned fine document.” Naturalization followed as a matter 
of course, but in this case possibly Pat’s assurance may be held to have deserved it. 



322 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

of the Queen and the citizens of the Republic it would 
be more seemly to make the process of naturalization 
something more than a premium on perjury. The pro¬ 
cess of registration is almost as great a farce as the 
process of naturalization. The list of voters registered 
in a precinct in Chicago may have as little connection 
with the ward in which they are registered as Boss Mc- 
Kane’s gang of rowdies had with Coney Island. 

The most amusing tales are told concerning the frauds 
practiced by politicians in registering electors. Tramps 
and nondescripts of every description, raked together from 
anywhere and everywhere, can be registered under any 
name and with any address, so as to swamp the resident 
electorate. In Chicago in one ward on one occasion, 
the registration agents falling short of names and lack¬ 
ing the imagination of a novelist, registered as citizens 
of that ward every man whose name was printed on 
the familiar print representing the prize fight between 
Sayers and Heenan. None of these worthies had ever 
been in the ward, few of them had ever been in the 
country, many of them were dead ; that was immaterial. 
The politician had registered them all as citizens, and 
when polling day came he had his obedient drove ready, 
who voted punctually as Tom Sayers and J. C. Heenan 
or any other of the ornaments of the British prize ring 
of thirty years ago. 

The only chance of exerting any influence for good 
on a primary is by what may be described briefly as in¬ 
cipient mugwumpery. That is to say, if before the pri¬ 
maries, the better elements of each party meet together, 
mustering as strongly as possible, and were to let it be 
distinctly understood at the headquarters of the respect¬ 
ive parties, that this section would bolt the ticket unless 
good candidates are selected, this would in most cases 
result in preventing the nominations which at present 
are a disgrace to the city. In default of such organiza¬ 
tions honest men are practically disfranchised. 

As long as party leaders know that if they nominate 


How the Oracle is Worked . 323 

the devil himself, the sworn Democrat or Republican 
will vote the party ticket rather than turn to the arch¬ 
angel Gabriel if he were nominated by the other side, 
they will simply consult their own convenience, which 
in nine cases out of ten consists in taking the line of 
least resistance by pandering to the ugliest and most ag¬ 
gressive members of their own party. But once let it be 
known that each party has its sworn contingency of 
honest men who will put up honesty before party, and 
who would rather defeat their own side than be accessory 
to the election of a thief or a boodler, and we shall see a 
great change for the better. Even the toughest and most 
unmanageable of the heelers of the ward politicians 
would bow to the inevitable, and recognize that it was 
no use trying it on with any man who was not up to 
what might be regarded as the mugwump standard. 

However natural it may be to an Englishman to com¬ 
pare American election methods with those with which 
he is familiar in the old country, it is almost impossible 
for an American to conceive of elections conducted under 
the strict rules of the English Corrupt Practices Act. 
Whenever I described to citizens of Chicago the penalties 
exacted under that Draconian law, they declared with 
one consent that if it were put in force in America there 
is not a single candidate who could not be unseated on 
petition for the acts of his agents. Yet any one who 
has any regard for the purity of elections, and for the 
checking of this Saturnalia of corruption and debauchery 
which prevails in contested elections in America, as it 
formerly prevailed in Great Britain, can hardly refrain 
from sighing for the Corrupt Practices Act in the United 
States. 

That measure is the most unique illustration of a law 
which cuts up by the roots one of the most deeply 
rooted cancers in the electoral system at a single 
stroke. Its provisions are simple but searching. Every 
candidate, on the eve of election, is compelled by law to 
nominate an agent through whom alone all expenses in- 


324 tf Christ Came to Chicago. 

curred by the candidate must be paid. These expenses 
must not exceed a certain statutory maximum, and at 
the close of the election a full account of all moneys 
expended must be returned within a certain limited 
period. If during the course of the election the candi¬ 
date, his agent or any of his subordinate agents were to 
pay any elector any sum of money, no matter how 
small, or even to defray the cost of his railway fare or 
recoup him for the loss of time on voting day, that act 
in itself is sufficient when proven before an election 
judge to vitiate the election. That is to say, if a candi¬ 
date gave an elector a dollar to pay him for his loss of 
time and railway fare in order that he might register his 
vote, that act would be sufficient to vitiate the election 
even if the candidate had a plurality of thousands of votes. 
Nor would he be allowed to statid again when unseated, 
for that constituency during the existing legislature. 
The law is equally strict, although the penalty is not so 
severe, as regards the disqualification of a candidate, in 
case of treating or intimidation. 

Citizens of both political parties have assured me re¬ 
peatedly that were such provisions enforced in the 
United States, there is not a representative of the people, 
from the President down to the Constable, who would not 
be unseated when the conduct of his election was made 
matter of inquiry before an impartial judicial tribunal, 
taking evidence on oath on the spot. 

The practice of treating is carried to what seems to 
our English ideas an absolutely ruinous extent, and can¬ 
didates of both parties might well welcome legislation 
which would reduce such irregular claims upon their 
purses. 

Chicago is in the throes of what for the want of a 
better name may be called a Civic Revival. The good 
men and women of all parties have begun to realize how 
disgraceful to the city is the condition of its municipal 
administration. The Mayor has placed himself at the 
head of a movement directed against the worst vices of 


How the Oracle is Worked. 


325 


the system of organized boodle, which has so long had 
everything its own way in the City Council. The finan¬ 
cial exigencies of the city treasury, the extreme suffering 
occasioned by the lack of employment throughout the 
winter and many other things have combined to prick the 
conscience and arouse the moral sense of the community. 
Flagrant instances of corruption have occurred in the City 
Council on the very eve of the elections, and we are jus¬ 
tified in turning to the April polls with the hope that 
they will show that Chicago has at last wearied of being 
represented and governed by the vilest of her citizens. 
It is fortunate that no national issue has arisen to com¬ 
plicate the question which will be submitted to the 
people. The April election is simply to select new Al¬ 
dermen, Town Assessors and Collectors. It is likely to 
be fought out from first to last on municipal grounds. 
This is as it should be. 

Even if the pending fight should result in a brilliant 
victory for the forces of reform, the campaign will not 
be over. The enemy never sleeps. The forces of cor¬ 
ruption exercise an influence as permanent as the law 
of gravitation, whereas the reformers act by fits and 
starts. There is an inevitable tendency on the part of 
all well-to-do citizens to go to sleep politically the day 
after they have recorded their votes. The system of 
checks and counter checks, which the Americans have 
borrowed from the English Constitution as it was when 
George the Third was King, tends directly to encourage 
this sluggard tendency on the part of the citizens. An 
English city like Chicago would have no limitations 
upon its powers of taxation, nor would the Mayor have 
any veto upon the decisions of the City Council. With 
us the Mayor is simply the Chairman elected by the City 
Council. He is nominally the chief magistrate, but his 
vote counts for no more than that of any other Alderman 
in the Council. In Chicago the Mayor counts for more 
than two-thirds of the Aldermen minus one, and his veto 
is relied upon as the sole effective check against exces- 


326 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

sive corruption, to which the Aldermen, as their votes 
prove, would otherwise be prone. 

If the citizens of Chicago felt that there was no limit 
to the taxation which the Aldermen could impose, and 
that there was no check upon the City Council in the 
shape of the Mayor’s veto, they would, perforce, be com¬ 
pelled to see to it that their representatives in the Coun¬ 
cil were honorable citizens. As it is, what with limita¬ 
tions here and vetoes there, the citizens for the most part 
lull themselves to sleep with the feeling that the Alderman 
cannot do very much harm after all, and that they can 
afford to allow them to play tricks within the limited 
area allotted to them. But no city can afford to allow 
their representatives to ignore honesty and good faith. 


CHAPTER VI. 

THE WATCHMEN OF THE CITY. 

“Son of Man,” came the word of the Lord to the He¬ 
brew prophet, “I have made you a watchman unto the 
House of Israel.” The same word might well be applied 
to the editors of the press of Chicago. They are 
the watchmen of the house of our local Israel. They 
stand on the battlements keeping watch and ward while 
the citizens sleep, and upon them, first and foremost of 
all men, lies the responsibility and warning and rousing 
of the community as to the perils which encompass it. 
Chicago, prolific in all things, has been exceptionally so 
in the production of journals. It gives you the headache 
merely to read the list of the periodical publications in 
the directory. Of the great majority of these, however, 
it may be said as it was said bitterly of one of the an¬ 
cient churches, “they have a name to live but indeed 
they are dead.” There is no place in the city where 
all of them can be purchased, and as it would take a long 
day’s march to make a pilgrimage to all their publishing 
houses they remain unknown to the majority of 
the citizens. Its periodicals are as polyglot as its inhab¬ 
itants, and even its newspapers are printed in seven 
different languages. For practical purposes, however, 
the newspapers which do watchmen’s service for the 
whole of the city are printed in English with the ex 
ception of Mr. Hesing’s Staats Zeitung the only 
non-English paper which is on evidence at the book¬ 
stalls. There are several other daily papers in Chicago 
which no one outside the office where they are pub¬ 
lished seems to see. Omitting all these we may compare 
for practical purposes the watchmen of Chicago to the 
staff of the ten English papers, five of which appear in 
the morning and five in the evening. 

327 


328 If Christ Came to Chicago . 

The Record , which is published at one cent, has the 
largest circulation of the morning papers, while the 
Tribune , the Herald and the Inter-Ocean in the order 
named circulate over or under 100,000 copies a day. 
The Times , the remaining paper, belonged to the late 
mayor, Mr. Carter Harrison, by whom it was valued 
more for its influence than for its dividends which were 
usually represented by a minus quantity. Of the even¬ 
ings, the Daily News , which when Mr. Melville Stone 
was connected with it, attained the phenomenal circula¬ 
tion of 200,000 per day in a city of less than a million 
inhabitants, still has the largest circulation of all the 
evening papers and by far the greatest advertising rev¬ 
enue. The Evening Post, the afternoon satellite of the 
Herald is as much in advance of all its evening con¬ 
temporaries in ability and influence and general quality of 
make up and appearance as the Daily News is ahead of 
them in circulation and advertisements. The Journal 
is an old established paper with fine crusted prejudices 
of the olden time concerning Catholics and “sich” 
which its editor expresses with refreshing vigor. The 
Mail, judging from its appearance, has more ability, 
than capital, and more assurance than either. The 
Dispatch , the drunken helot of journalism, is the only 
remaining paper. Its character can best be judged from 
its advertising columns which are stuffed with advertise¬ 
ments of houses of prostitution and of assignation. 
Like attracts like. 

With the exception of the Dispatch and perhaps of 
the Mail , the other Chicago dailies are conducted as 
respectably as any newspapers in the world. They 
are all owned and controlled by men who have 
sunk thousands of dollars in their journalistic in¬ 
vestment, and who do not mean to get left if they 
possibly can help it. The internicine war which 
exists between the newspapers in some towns does 
not exist in Chicago where all the respectable jour¬ 
nals have combined for regulating their business 


329 


The Watchmen of the City. 

on common lines. Neither with the exception of 
the Inter-Ocean and the Evening Journal can they 
be said to be fanatically partisan. The Tribune 
is Republican, but it is national Republicanism with 
its protective adjuncts which excite its devotion; it 
is reasonable and impartial in relation to city affairs. 
The papers as a whole and the men who write them 
are good average press men without any very great 
enthusiasm for their profession, doing the best they 
can from day to day. They turn out readable copy 
and manufacture scare heads to the best of their ability 
which is not inconsiderable and which appears all the 
more conspicuous when the material to be operated upon 
is as dull as ditch water. Chicago journalists are good 
business men. Since Mr. Melville Stone left the Daily 
News there are not many editors who take their 
position seriously. They seem to feel that it is more im¬ 
portant to build up a great property than to exert 
a great power. Mr. Medill, of the Tribune ) on one 
famous occasion laid down the doctrine that a journalist 
was not a teacher, he was not a leader, he was simply a 
huckster whose duty it was to supply whatever articles 
his customers required without allowing his own con¬ 
victions to interfere with the conduct of his journalistic 
shop. Fortunately, Mr. Medill’s practice is much 
better than his precept, otherwise he would have de¬ 
served the retort which was made at the time that if 
he were right, Dana, Greely and Bryant and all the 
greatest men in American journalism had mistaken 
their vocation. The Tribune has often shown that it 
was more than a shop where hucksters sold news or 
traded opinions according to the demands of their pur¬ 
chasers, but all the newspapers are more or less under 
the influence of the commercial theory of journalism. 
To lead public opinion may be glorious but it is not 
always profitable. The true policy, according to the 
counting house theory is to be just a little behind pub¬ 
lic opinion rather than ahead of it and for the most part 


330 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

the newspapers live down to that conception of their 
duties. 

That is an abdication of the position of power which 
in a free democracy they ought naturally to occupy. In 
a democracy the newspaper is or ought to be chief scep¬ 
ter of power and to degrade an instrument of govern¬ 
ment to the mere level of a corner store—and sometimes 
to the level of a corner saloon—is not worthy our high 
calling and not calculated to help either journalism or 
Chicago. The ambition to lead, to direct, to educate 
and to act as the uncrowned kings of the American 
democracy does not seem to exist among a majority 
of newspapers, which really often seem to have no 
other ambition than to heap up an immense fortune 
and fatten on their gains. I wish sometimes that news¬ 
paper proprietors of the present day had as much of the 
fear of God before their eyes as the old medieval robber- 
baron. It is not, perhaps, a very lofty idea, but it is 
not one which is lived up to by the newspaper proprie¬ 
tors. In the old days when a man, who was stouter, or 
shrewder, or more cunning than his neighbors, raised 
himself above the level of the common fighting herd 
and succeeded after a time in carving out for himself a. 
domain, in the center of which he built his castle, from 
being a mere filibuster, a militant adventurer, fighting 
for his own profit or for such of his neighbors’ goods as 
he could seize,.he often developed under the pressure of 
the spiritual power wielded by the old church into 
something like a civilized ruler. Having “made 
his pile,” he used it in order to govern and civilize 
and educate the people in the midst of whom he had 
established his castle. But there is no such recognition of 
responsibility on the part of many newspaper proprietors 
nowadays. Instead of regarding the wealth which they 
have acquired by the success of their journals as merely 
giving them a starting point from which they might be 
able to civilize and educate and humanize the conditions 
of life in the midst of the people whose support has 


The Watchmen of the City. 331 

given them their wealth they live self-indulgent, self- 
centered lives. This system can be changed only by 
bringing back into existence the real live church. The 
old medieval baron would probably have been no better 
than the modern newspaper proprietor if it had not been 
for the spiritual power which, by a judicious use of hell- 
fire, succeeded in scaring him into something like 
humanity and decency. We want to substitute nowadays 
something for the old church, and I do not at present 
exactly see where it is to be found, except in the grad¬ 
ual growth of a healthier public opinion on the part of 
the newspaper men themselves and an unsparing and 
unflinching use of the newspaper as a social pillory. 

Unfortunately the effectiveness of the newspaper from 
this point of view has been impaired by the continual 
straining after exaggeration and emphasis which is 
equivalent to an incessant bawl kept up in private con¬ 
versation. If you always howl through a speaking 
trumpet you find it difficult to attract attention when 
you have something really important to say. This 
straining after effect and the unsparing use of the super¬ 
lative all tends to weaken the influence of the pointed 
word which, like everthing else in the world needs to be 
used with reserve if it is to be used with power. When 
newspapers denounce every political opponent as if he 
were the incarnation of every crime, people learn to 
take every invective as merely a journalistic method of 
indicating their dissent from the opinions which he 
holds. Sometimes, however, the need arises when the 
journalist should speak with emphasis and some great 
evil is to be prevented, they find it difficult to arouse 
the attention of the public which is so accustomed to 
being scare headed that it can hardly be roused to 
more than a languid interest even if the capitals in the 
scare head were printed six inches long. 

The papers are all in line this spring. But they have 
all been united before when they all fought Carter Harri¬ 
son, with the exception of the Times. But he was returned 


332 


If Christ Came to Chicago . 

at the head of the poll by an overwhelming majority. 
Carter Harrison was an astute man, who knew how to 
minimize the influence of the newspapers. He 
represented himself as being the victim of a newspaper 
trust, as the other papers had never forgiven him on 
account of his ownership of the Times. As the allied 
papers were weighted with a very undesirable candidate, 
Mr. Harrison’s victory was complete. The result has 
made the Chicago papers think twice or even thrice 
before they commit themselves to a similar enterprise. 
They had gone forth to battle and were beaten, and felt 
very sore about it. They are once more in battle array, 
and they certainly do not lack enemies against whom to 
direct their shot. 

Newspapers can do more good by bringing facts to 
light than by the most Ciceronian invective. It was this 
which led me to address the following appeal to the 
press at my last meeting in the Central Music Hall: 

I have been for twenty years a pressman, and I am proud of my pro¬ 
fession. It has always seemed to me that the newspaper editor was the 
descendant of the spiritual power which in the medieval times exer¬ 
cised so great and salutary an effect over the barbarians who overran 
Europe. I regard the modern editor as in the direct spiritual succession 
to all the prophets and all the spiritual teachers who have ever lived, 
and, therefore, in dealing with those who need to be revived, if the 
community is to be revived, I begin with the representatives of the 
spiritual power, the press first, and then the pulpit. 

Think of it! Every day, and in Chicago, I am sorry to say, seven 
days a week, the newspaper editor has to speak out what he thinks to 
be true, and what he thinks is necessary for the welfare of his readers 
to know. He has that opportunity, which no other man has, of im¬ 
pressing such truth as there may be in him upon his fellow men. 
Yet somehow or other our newspaper editors do not seem to feel 
ashamed and disgraced by the existence of such a state of things as 
there is to be found at present in the City Hall. 

Has it ever occurred to your confreres, editors of Chicago news¬ 
papers, that the shame and the disgrace of this state of things lies 
more at your door than at the door of any other class of citizens in 
the community ? I know that some have done all they can, and I 
know that others would have done a great deal more if they had not 
been hindered by the influence that comes from the counting room 
and the advertising columns rather than from the editorial sanctum. 
But taking it broadly, without laying any blame on any individual, is 
it not a right and true thing to say to the editors in this city of Chi¬ 
cago, where you have some of the most prosperous and enterprising 


The Watchmen of the City. 333 

papers in the world, that it is a disgrace to the newspapers that they 
cannot clean out your City Hall ? They advise the electors for whom 
to vote, they criticise the city fathers, and they proclaim the gospel 
day by day as they see it, and you see the result before you. 

Over in the old country, pressmen and the general public believe 
two things firmly about American newspapers. It is a tradition with 
us that the American newspaper man is one of the smartest and 
sharpest and most indomitable of all men, and that Argus with his 
hundred eyes was not in it compared with an American newspaper 
reporter; that if there was anything in the whole world which was 
covered and hidden, that would be the one thing which an American 
reporter would unearth and publish to the world. That was one 
belief of mine which, I am sorry to say, has been rudely shattered 
since I came to Chicago. There was another idea, and that was, that 
after an American reporter had got the facts and verified them there 
was no power on this earth that could prevent an American editor 
from publishing it. This is also a delusion. I suppose we got that 
idea from several what you would call remarkable journalistic “beats” 
which were done by American press people, chief among which was 
the well-known instance when James Gordon Bennett sent Stanley to 
find Livingstone in the heart of Central Africa. You remember how 
Livingstone had disappeared, no one knew where he was, and then 
an American editor said to an American reporter: “There is the map 
of Africa; Livingstone has got lost somewhere in the middle of that 
continent. Go and find him.” Mr. Stanley, nothing loath, packed 
up his things and went through the wilds of Central Africa, regarding 
all the perils through which he had to pass as all in the day’s business, 
until the day on which he took off his hat and said: “Dr. Livingstone, 
I presume.” That has given the American press a great prestige. 
But alas for the illusions of our childhood ! When we come to this 
city of Chicago, we learn that there is a work which is as important, 
and more important to you than that which Stanley undertook. 
When he had to find Livingstone, the only direction given him was 
Central Africa, somewhere near the equatorial lakes. If James 
Gordon Bennett would send a Stanley to Chicago to discover the 
boodlers and name them, I think he would not have such a wide 
area to go over as Central Africa. He would say, “Go to the City 
Hall and you will find them somewhere in the neighborhood of 
Powers and O’Brien’s saloon.” I know that there are men on every 
Chicago newspaper who would be only too delighted to take the com¬ 
mission to find the boodlers and get legal evidence, but then they are 
held back. 

There is a secret which has been diligently cloaked up so that 
nobody can get at it. You ask how many people know the secret? 
There must be at least thirty, forty or fifty who know the secret, and 
yet this secret, which is of so much importance to all of you in this 
city, is too much for the Chicago newspapers to find out. James Gor¬ 
don Bennett can send Stanley to the heart of Central Africa, but the 
Chicago papers, either individually or collectively, cannot find out who 
it is that boodles in the City Hall. 

It is one of the most wonderful things I ever heard of. Here are 
four or five of the brightest newspapers with millions behind them, 


334 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

and there is the City Hall just across the way. They all admit cor¬ 
ruption. And yet, when I ask who it is that gets that money, and 
who it is that pays that money, no one can tell me, no, not even a 
Chicago newspaper. 

The boodler has not yet been run to earth, but he 
obligingly came forth from his retreat and displayed his 
boodle-branded forehead unabashed before the commu¬ 
nity. There are 42 of them, of whom Mr. Powers of the 
19th ward seems to be the chief. All the newspapers, 
always with the exception of the Dispatch , seem to be 
vigorously impressing this upon the attention of the 
public. While wishing them all God speed in this 
work, it seems to me that the Civic Revival would be 
powerfully helped if it had a distinctive organ of its 
own, and this without any disrespect to the daily papers, 
who indeed would find such an organ an invaluable 
auxiliary. In addition co newspapers which are prop¬ 
erties and run for profits, there might exist one journal 
which might aspire to be a power and a prophet, even 
if it were run at a loss. It is somewhat odd that in the 
midst of all the periodical publications of Chicago there 
is no one weekly newspaper in the English sense; that 
is to say, there is no weekly two cent paper which the 
citizen can read who has neither the money nor the time 
to read the daily press. The consequence is that a great 
many people have all the daily papers on their tables 
and are constantly failing to read things they ought to 
see and want to see. They cannot see the wood because 
of the trees. There is such a mass of printed matter 
laid before them, without much perspective, that the 
weightier matters relating to the good government of 
the city get overlooked or are thrust into the back¬ 
ground by the more sensational happenings of the hour. 
A newspaper which would survey the progress of the 
city from week to week, summarizing everything that 
was of permanent importance appearing in the press 
from day to day, and which would preach civic reform, 
would have a distinct mission in Chicago. 

Were such a journal to be established and distributed 


The Watchmen of the City. 335 

to every household in the city every week, either by the 
aid of the churches or the help of the post, it would be 
an organ of incalculable influence in the town. Every- 
thing of course would depend upon how it was edited 
and the nature of its contents. Bright enough writers, 
however, could be found to turn out a weekly journal 
whose advent would be looked for impatiently and whose 
non-delivery would be resented sharply. Such a distri¬ 
bution could be provided for either by endowment or by 
the sale of advertising space. 

In order to give a little more substance to this sugges¬ 
tion I ventured to draw up a preliminary prospectus of 
such a newspaper. An appropriate title would be 
simply, “ Chicago,” with the motto, “ I will Thy will.” 
Here is the draft: 

“ CHICAGO.” 

On the first Saturday in-there will be published the first 

number of a weekly paper entitled “Chicago,” the aim and object of 
which is indicated by its motto. “I will Thy will. 

The aspiration of its conductors is to familiarize every citizen of 
Chicago with the conception that this city should be made and can be 
made, the ideal city of the world. 

To achieve this end every resource of journalism, poetry, 
romance, prophecy, art, prizes, etc., will be employed to quicken 
interest and to concentrate attention upon this civic ideal, and for the 
first year at least a copy of this paper, which will be published at 
two cents, will be delivered at the door of every family in Chicago. 

Nothing short of this regular weekly distribution to every house¬ 
hold, regardless of nationality, religion, color or station, can suffice 
in so cosmopolitan a community to bring the great ideal adequately 
before the whole body of the citizens. 

The aspiration, born of the World’s Fair and its congresses, to 
make Chicago worthy of its position as the first city in the United 
States has already brought about what may be described as a civic 
revival whose influence may be perceived in many directions. 

The new weekly will chronicle the fruits of this civic revival, will 
encourage the citizens to fresh efforts by the record of successive 
advances made towards a better social state, or rouse them to more 
earnest action by emphasizing the lesson of occasional reverse and, 
in short, will endeavor to be the popular gazette of the campaign for 
the realization of the ideal Chicago. There is nothing Utopian or 
revolutionary about this programme of “Chicago.” It is severely 
practical and persistently opportunist. While recognizing as the 
ultimate the fulfillment of the petition “Thy will be done in Chicago 
as it is Heaven,” every step, however faltering, in the right direction 
will command our support. To refuse to do anything until you can 


336 If Christ Came to Chicago . 

do everything is to do nothing. Our policy will be to do what you 
can as soon as you can, wherever you can, with whatever instruments 
are within reach in order to make life happier, healthier and more 
human for every man, woman and child in Chicago. 

To achieve this, no new patent nostrum of a social specific is 
required. All that is needed is the intelligent and resolute use of the 
existing civic organization as the natural and constitutional instru¬ 
ment for securing for the citizens of Chicago the best of everything 
which exists in the world. 

If Chicago is to be the Capital of Civilization, it is indispensable 
that she should at the very least be able to show that every resident 
within her limits enjoyed every advantage which intelligent and 
public spirited administration has secured for the people elsewhere. 
Only in this way can Chicago vindicate her right to the position to 
which she aspires, and it will be the constant endeavor of the con¬ 
ductors of “Chicago” to call attention to the flaws in her social 
armor, to describe improvements which have been made in other 
communities and to indicate the ways and means by which such 
improvements can be most easily secured for the city. 

“Chicago” will not be a party paper, neither will it be identified 
with any religion save that which finds expression in the Service of 
Man. Its constant aim will be to promote the union of all who love, 
for the service of all who suffer. Instead of seeking for points 
of difference as for hid treasure, it will endeavor to discover points of 
accord and, therefore, a basis of possible co-operation among parties 
and sects which are most opposed to each other. To see each other 
as we appear to those who love us at our best moments is more profit¬ 
able than to dwell constantly upon the gloomy portrait painted by 
those who hate us when we are at our worst. 

“Chicago” starts with the promise of hearty co-operation in dis¬ 
tribution and in support from many organizations never before united 
in the promotion of a common enterprise. It will combat as the 
common enemy all that breeds distrust whether of nationality or of 
sect, and will constantly seek to promote the growth of a hearty 
brotherly comradeship among all the citizens of this great city. Its 
great ideal which will ever be presented before its readers will be such 
a transformation of the conditions of life that no one’s child in the 
poorest district of Chicago will be doomed to miseries, temptations 
and wrongs which we should regard as intolerable for our own 
children. 

To succeed in arousing a sense of the responsibilities and oppor¬ 
tunities of citizenship it is necessary to present the issues involved in 
civic questions in such popular fashion as to enlist the sympathies of 
all—especially of the women and children. Hence, while “Chicago” 
will endeavor to give every week a summary and a survey of all that 
has been published during the week relating to the improvement of 
the city, it will have special features of its own in the shape of short 
tales, stories from real life in Chicago, ballads based on the events of 
the week, character sketches of leading citizens, and other articles 
which will enable the reader to understand the inner human and 
therefore the divine element that underlies the dry and uninviting 
discussions of public questions. 


337 


The Watchmen of the City. 

To stimulate public interest in all classes in the questions of the 
city prizes will be offered every week for contributions bearing upon 
the improvement of the conditions of life in Chicago, and every 
effort will be made to develop the growth of a civic literature in 
prose and poetry. 

So far from being the rival of any existing periodical “Chicago” 
hopes to become the supplement or auxiliary of all, and will rejoice if 
it is able to co-operate with each of them in helping to realize the 
great aim of all in making Chicago the ideal city of the world. 

Such a journal, once well established, would do more 
to give the cosmopolitan heterogeneous mass of the resi¬ 
dents of Chicago a sense of the unity of their city and 
greatness of its destinies than any other scheme which 
could be devised. Some such paper seems to be much 
needed in every great city. The churches of the sects 
have their weekly organs, but for this city, in which 
there are a million and a half of human beings, there is 
no organ and no pulpit from which the whole of the citi¬ 
zens can be reached. What an audience would hear 
that prophet voice, and, as Russell Lowell said, with 
“never as much as a nodder even among them:” 

And from what a Bible can he choose his text—a Bible which needs 
no translation, and which no priestcraft can shut and clasp from the 
laiety—the open volume of the world, upon which, with a pen of sun¬ 
shine and destroying fire, the inspired present is even now writing 
the annals of God! Methinks the editor who should understand his 
calling, and be equal thereto, would truly deserve that title which 
Homer bestows upon princes. He would be the Moses of our nine¬ 
teenth century ; and whereas the old Sinai, silent now, is but a com¬ 
mon mountain stared at by the elegant tourist, and crawled over by 
the hammering geologist, we must find his tables of the new law here 
among factories in this Wilderness of Sin (Numbers xxxiii. 12) called 
Progress of Civilization, and be the captain of our Exodus into the 
Canaan of a truer social order. 





PART V. — What Would Christ Do in Chicago? 


CHAPTER I. 

THE CONSCIENCE OF CHICAGO. 

If Christ came to Chicago He would do as He did in 
olden time and endeavor to band together those who loved 
Him and believed in Him in an organization which 
would work for the realization of His ideals, and for the 
removal of the evils which afflict the least of these His 
brethren. In other words, He would form a church in 
which all might be one, even as He was one with his 
Father. Such unity is impossible on any basis excepting 
that of the practical life of service and of sacrifice. But 
the one church, that is His Church Militant, can and will 
be founded upon the basis of His life and His love, for that 
is broad enough to include ail existing churches and 
others beside, of whom He said: “Other sheep I have 
which are not of this fold. ’ ’ The only possible definition 
of theChurch Universal is the union of all who love for the 
service of all who suffer. And that church, from the 
very fervor of its love for its Divine Master, will not 
ensconce itself in pews stuffed with comfortable ec¬ 
clesiastical cushions, enjoying as sweet morsels spirit¬ 
ual caramels dispensed from the pulpit, but will find 
the true service of the sanctuary in going down into 
the depths, even to the depths of ward politics and elec¬ 
toral agitation, in order to attempt, amid the dust and the 
din of the world-struggle to rebuild society on the 
foundation of the Kingdom of God. 

The old idea of the union between church and state, 
has long since been recognized by the modern mind as 
an anachronism at the present time. It is a survival 

339 



340 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

from the past which must either be readjusted to meet 
different conditions or cease to exist. Cavour’s formula 
“A free Church in a free State,” is accepted by Ameri¬ 
cans in the plural number—free Churches in a free State, 
But the problem of the relation between the spiritual 
power which the conscience of the community and the 
civic power which represents the will and the executive 
mind of the nation is far from settled by the mere enun¬ 
ciation of a formula. The Mayflower sailed across the 
Atlantic not in order to found a free church in a free 
state, in the sense of a state in which the church had 
nothing to say, but rather to found a state in which the 
church should be supreme. Our Puritan forefathers, 
labored for a theocracy as all earnest men have always 
labored whether they call themselves Mohammedans, 
Catholics, Puritans or Latter Day Saints. No one 
at this time of day would propose to endeavor to 
realize the theocracy or the rule of right and the attain¬ 
ment of the ideal by the worn out machinery of church 
meetings or ecclesiastical synods, but the essence of the 
problem remains the same. The community which we 
call a state stands more than ever in need of being 
directed and controlled and dominated by the moral 
sense of the community. In other words, the state.must 
have a conscience as well as a will and a mind. That 
community will be best governed in which the moral sense 
of its members has most authority. This indeed is only a 
re-statement of the old proposition that the society 
which always endeavors to do what it believes to be 
right will be a better governed society than one whose 
members subordinate right to considerations of selfish 
interest and who act upon the unavowed but practical 
belief that it is quite possible to cheat God. Mr. 
Bigelow’s caution that “you have got to get up early if 
you want to take in God” has been forgotten by many 
smart citizens who imagine that they can run a town 
safely and well by entering into a practical copartner¬ 
ship with the Devil. 


The Conscience of Chicago. 341 

The address to all English-speaking folk, written 
four years ago, will at least serve to show that whether 
in Eondon as an editor or in Chicago as a visitor I have 
clung with tenacity to my one central conception of the 
Civic Church. 

There exists at this moment no institution which even aspires to 
be to the English-speakiug-world what the Catholic Church in its 
prime was to the intelligence of Christendom. To call attention to 
the need for such au institution, adjusted, of course, to the altered 
circumstances of the new era, to enlist the co-operation of all those 
who will work towards the creation of some such common centre for 
the inter-communication of ideas, and the universal diffusion of the 
ascertained results of human experience in a form accessible to all 
men, are the ultimate objects for which this review has been estab¬ 
lished. 

This is done distinctly on a religious principle. The revelation 
of the Divine Will did not cease when St. John wrote the last page 
of the Apocalypse, or when Malachi finished his prophecy. “ God is 
not dumb, that He should speak no more,” and we have to seek for 
the gradual unfolding of his message to his creatures in the highest 
and ripest thought of our time. Reason may be a faulty instrument, 
but it is the medium through which the Divine thought enters the 
mind of man. 

Among all the agencies for the shaping of the future of the 
human race, none seem so potent now and still more hereafter as the 
English-speaking man. Already he begins to dominate the world. 
The British Empire and the American Republic comprise within 
their limits almost all the territory that remains empty for the over¬ 
flow of the world. Their citizens, with all their faults, are leading 
the van of civilization, and if any great improvements are to be made 
in the condition of mankind, they will necessarily be leading instru¬ 
ments in the work. Hence our first starting-point will be a deep and 
almost awe-struck regard for the destinies of the English-speaking 
man. To make him worthy of his immense vocation, and at the 
same time to help to hold together and strengthen Jhe political ties 
which at present link all English-speaking communities save one in a 
union which banishes all dread of internecine war, to promote by 
every means a fraternal union between the British Empire and the 
American Republic. These will be our plainest duties. 

It follows from this fundamental conception of the magnitude and 
importance of the work of the English-speaking race in the world, 
that a resolute endeavor should be made to equip the individual 
citizen more adequately for his share in that work. For the ordinary 
common English-speaking creature, country yokel, or child of the 
slums, is the seed of Empire. The red-haired hobbledehoy, smoking 
his short pipe at the corner of Seven Dials, may two years hence be 
the red-coated representative of the might and majesty of Britain in 
the midst of a myriad of Africans or Asiatics. That village girl, 
larking with the lads on her way to the well, will in a few years be 
the mother of citizens of new commonwealths; the founders of cities 


342 If Christ Came to Chicago . 

in the Far West whose future destiny may be as famous as that of 
ancient Rome. No one is too insignificant to be overlooked. We 
send abroad our best and our worst; all alike are seed-corn of the 
race. Hence the importance of resolute endeavor to improve the 
condition, moral and material, in which the ordinary English- 
speaking man is bred and reared. To do this is a work as worthy ol 
national expenditure as the defence of our shores from hostile fleets. 
The amelioration of the conditions of life, the levelling up of social 
inequalities, the securing for each individual the possibility of a 
human life, and the development to the uttermost by religious, 
•moral, and intellectual agencies of the better side of our countrymen, 
—these objects follow as necessary corollaries from the recognition of 
the providential sphere occupied by English-speaking men in the 
history of the world. 

Another corollary is that we can no longer afford to exclude one 
section of the English-speaking race from all share in the education 
and moralizing influences which result from the direct exercise of 
responsible functions in the state. The enfranchisement of women 
will not revolutionize the world, but it will at least give those who 
rock our cradles a deeper sense of the reality of the sceptre which 
their babies’ hands may grasp than would otherwise be possible. Our 
children in future will be born of two parents, each politically 
intelligent, instead of being the product of a union between a political 
being and a creature whose mind is politically blank. If at present 
we have to deplore so widespread a lack of civic virtue among our 
men, the cause may be found in the fact that the mothers from whom 
men acquired whatever virtue they possess have hitherto been 
studiously excluded from the only school where civic virtue can be 
learnt—that of the actual exercise of civic functions, the practical 
discharge of civic responsibilities. 

We believe in God, and in Humanity ! The English-speaking race 
in America and elsewhere, is one of the chief of God’s chosen agents 
for executing coming improvements in the lot of mankind. If all 
those who see that, could be brought into hearty union to help all 
that tends to make that race more fit to fulfil its providential mission, 
and to combat all that hinders or impairs that work, such an associa¬ 
tion or secular order would constitute a nucleus or rallying point for 
all that is most vital in the English-speaking w r orld, the ultimate 
influence of which it would be difficult to overrate. 

Our supreme duty is the winnowing out by a process of natural 
selection, and enlisting for hearty service for the commonweal all 
those who possess within their hearts the sacred fire of patriotic devo¬ 
tion to their country. Whatever we may make of democratic insti¬ 
tutions, government of majorities, and the like, the fact remains that 
the leadership of democracies and the guidance of democracies belong 
always to the few. The governing minds are never numerous. 

Carlyle put this truth in the must offensive aspect, but truth it is, 
and it will be well or ill for us in proportion as we act upon it or the 
reverse. The wise are few. The whole problem is to discover the 
wise few, and to place the sceptre in their hands, and loyally to fol¬ 
low their leading. But how to find them out ? That is the greatest 
of questions. Mr. Carlyle, in almost his last political will and testa- 


The Conscience of Chicago. 343 

ment to the English people, wrote: “There is still, we hope, the 
unclassed aristocracy by nature, not inconsiderable in numbers, and 
supreme in faculty, in wisdom, in human talent, nobleness, and cour¬ 
age, who derive their patent of nobility direct from Almighty God. 
If, indeed, these fail us, and are trodden out under the unani¬ 
mous torrent of hobnails, of brutish hoofs and hobnails, then, indeed, 

it is all ended. National death lies ahead.Will there, in 

short, prove to be a recognizable small nucleus of Invincible Aristoi 
fighting for the Good Cause in their various wisest ways, and never 
ceasing or slackening till they die? This is the question of questions 
on which all turns. ’ ’ In the answer to this, could we give it clearly, 
as no man can,lies the oracle response, “ Life foryou: death for you. ” 

Our supreme task is to help to discover these wise ones, to afford 
them opportunity of articulate utterance, to do what we can to make 
their authority potent among their contemporaries. Who is there 
among the people who has truth in him, who is no self-seeker, who 
is no coward, and who is capable of honest, painstaking effort to help 
his country ? For such men we would search as for hidden treasures. 
They are the salt of the earth and the light of the world, and it is the 
duty and the privilege of the wise man to see that they are like cities 
set on the hill, which cannot be hid. 

The great word which has now to be spoken in the ears of the 
world is that the time has come when men and women must work for 
the salvation of the state or of the city with as much zeal and self- 
sacrifice as they now work for the salvation of the individual. For 
the saving of the soul of Hodge Joskins, what energy, what devotion, 
is not possible to all of us ! There is not a street in Chicago, nor a 
village in the country, which is not capable of producing, often at 
short notice and under slight pressure, a man or woman who will 
spend a couple of hours a week every week in the year, in more or 
less irksome voluntary exertions, in order to snatch the soul of Hodge 
Joskins from everlasting burning. But to save the country from the 
grasp of demons innumerable, to prevent this city or this Republic 
becoming an incarnate demon of lawless ambition and cruel love of 
gold, how many men or women are willing to spend even one hour 
a month or a year? For Hodge Joskins innumerable are the multi¬ 
tude of workers; for the city, or the state that embodiment of many 
millions of Hodges, how few are those who will exert themselves at all? 
At elections there is a little canvassing and excitement; but except 
ing at those times the idea that the state needs saving, that the democ¬ 
racy need educating, and that the problems of government and of 
reform need careful and laborious study, is foreign to the ideas of our 
people. The religious side of politics has not yet entered the minds 
of men. 

What is wanted is a revival of civic faith, a quickening of spiritual 
life in the political sphere, the inspiring of men and women with the 
conception of what may be done towards the salvation of the world, 
if they will but bring to bear upon public affairs the same spirit of 
self-sacrificing labor that so many thousands manifest in the ordinary 
drudgery of parochial and evangelistic work. It may no doubt seem 
an impossible dream. 

Can those dry bones live? Those who ask that question little 



344 U Christ Came to Chicago. 

know the infinite possibilities latent in the heart of man. The faith 
of Loyola, what an unsuspected mine of enthusiasm did it not spring 
upon mankind? “The Old World,” as Macauley remarks, “was 
not wide enough for that strange activity. In the depths of the 
Peruvian mines, in the hearts of the African slave caravans, on the 
shores of the Spice Islands, in the observatories of China, the Jesuits 
were to be found. They made converts in regions which neither 
avarice nor curiosity had tempted any of their countrymen to enter ; 
and preached and disputed in tongues of which no other native of the 
West understood a word.” 

How was this miracle effected? By the preaching of a man who 
energized the activity of the church by the ideals of chivalry and the 
strength of military discipline. What we have now to do is to ener¬ 
gize and elevate the politics of our time by the enthusiasm and the 
system of the religious bodies. Those who say that it is impossible 
to raise up men and women ready to sacrifice all they possess, and, if 
need be, to lay down their lives in any great cause that appeals to 
their higher nature, should spare a little time to watch the recruiting 
of the Salvation Army for the Indian mission field. The delicate 
dressmaker and the sturdy puddler, the young people raised in the 
densest layer of English commonplace, under the stimulus of an 
appeal to the instincts of self-sacrifice, and of their duty to their 
brethren, abandon home, friends, kindred, and go forth to walk bare¬ 
foot through India at a beggar’s pittance until they can pick up suffi- 
ecient words of the unfamiliar tongue to deliver to these dusky stran¬ 
gers the message of their Gospel. Certain disease awaits them, cruel 
privations, and probably an early death. But they shrink not. A race 
whose members are capable of such devotion cannot be regarded 
as hopeless, from the point of those who seek to rouse among the 
most enlightened a consuming passion for their country’s good. 

But how can it be done? As everything else of a like nature has 
been done since the world began—by the foolishness of preaching. 
And here again let Mr. Carlyle speak:— 

“There is no church, sayest thou? The voice of prophecy has gone 
dumb? This is even what I dispute: but in any case hast thou not 
still preaching enough? A preaching friar settles himself in every 
village and builds a pulpit which he calls newspaper. Therefrom he 
preaches what most momentous doctrines is in him for man’s salva¬ 
tion; and dost not thou listen and believe? Look well; thou seest 
everywhere a new clergy of the mendicant order, some barefooted, 
some almost barebacked, fashion itself into shape, and teach and 
preach zealously enough for copper alms and the love of God.” 

It is to these friars that we must look for the revival of civic faith 
which will save the English speaking race. For other hope of salva¬ 
tion from untutored democracy, demoralized by bosses and wire¬ 
pullers weighted with the burdens of state and distracted by its own 
clamor, wants and needs, it is difficult to see. 

That which we really wish to found is in very truth a civic church, 
every member of which should zealously, as much as it lay within 
him, preach the true faith, and endeavor to make it operative in the 
hearts and heads of its neighbors. Were such a church founded it 
would be as a great voice sounding out over sea and land the sum- 


345 


The Conscience of Chicago . 

mons to all men to think seriously and soberly of the public life in 
which they are called to fill a part. Visible in many ways is the 
decadence of the press. The mentor of the young democracy has 
abandoned philosophy, and stuffs the ears of its Telemachus with 
descriptions of Calypso’s petticoats and the latest scandals from the 
Court. All the more need, then, that there should be a voice which, 
like that of the muex^in from the eastern minaret, would summon 
the faithful to the duties imposed by their belief. 

A recent writer, who vainly struggled towards this ideal,has said:— 

“ We are told that the temporal welfare of man, and the salvation 
of the state, are ideals too meagre to arouse the enthusiasm which 
exults in self-sacrifice. It needs eternity, say some, to stimulate men 
to action in time. But as there is no eternity for the state, how then 
is patriotism possible? Have not hundreds and thousands of men 
and women gladly marched to death for ideas to be realized solely on 
this side of the grave? The decay of an active faith in the reality of 
the other world has no doubt paralyzed the spring of much human 
endeavor, and often left a great expanse of humanity practically 
waste so far as relates to the practical cultivation of the self-sacrific¬ 
ing virtues. We go into this waste land to possess it. , It is capable 
of being made to flourish, as of old, under the stimulating radiance 
of a great ideal and the diligent and intelligent culture of those who 
have the capacity for direction. If we could enlist in the active serv¬ 
ice of man as many men and women, in proportion to the number of 
those who are outside the churches, as any church or chapel will enlist 
in self-sacrificing labor for the young, the poor, and the afflicted, then 
indeed, results would be achieved of which, at present, we hardly 
venture even to dream. But it is in this that lies our hope of doing 
effective work for the regeneration and salvation of mankind.” 

This, it may be said, involves a religious idea, and when religion is 
introduced harmonious co-operation is impossible. That was so once; 
it will not always be the case, for, as we said recently in the Univer¬ 
sal Review :—“A new Catholicity has dawned upon the world. All 
religions are now recognized as essentially Divine. They represent 
the different angles at which man looks at God. All have something 
to teach us—how to make the common man more like God. The 
true religion is that which makes men most like Christ. And what 
is the ideal which Christ translated into a realized life? For practi¬ 
cal purposes this: To take trouble to do good to others. A simple 
formula, but the rudimentary and essential truth of the whole Chris¬ 
tian religion. To take trouble is to sacrifice time. All time is a por¬ 
tion of life. To lay down one’s life for the brethren—which is some¬ 
times literally the duty of the citizen who is called to die for his fel¬ 
lows—is the constant and daily duty demanded by all the thousand- 
and-one practical sacrifices which duty and affection call upon us to 
make for men. 

As the result of the publication of the foregoing 
appeal and the subsequent agitation of the subject 
through the Review was the formation of associations 
or federations of workers for the public good in various 


346 If Christ Came to Chicago • 

cities in England and Scotland. None of these asso¬ 
ciations, however, called themselves churches. The 
name of church is unpopular with the unchurched 
masses. And the application of the term to associa¬ 
tions, including atheists, horrified many orthodox Chris¬ 
tians. Cardinal Manning wrote me shortly before he 
died: “ Call it anything but a church and I am with 
you with all my heart. Call it a church and not one of 
my people will lift a finger to help you.” Mr. Price 
Hughes, of the Methodist body, was even more vehe¬ 
ment than the Cardinal in denouncing my attempt to 
restore the great word which has been degraded into 
the label of ecclesiastical coteries to its original purpose 
describing the union of all who love for the service of 
all who suffer. In some towns the name preferred was 
Civic Centre; in others, the Social Questions Union; 
and again others preferred the title An Association for 
Improving the Condition of the People. In Chicago 
the name preferred has been that of the Civic Federa¬ 
tion. The name is immaterial, but I still hold that the 
conception of the church universal and militant conveys 
better the idea which the Civic Federation is established 
to realize than any other yet invented by the wit of man. 
The Church was the machinery Christ devised for sav¬ 
ing the world by self-sacrificing love. 

What is wanted is a civic center which will genera¬ 
lize for the benefit of all the results obtained by isolated 
workers. The first desideratum is to obtain a man or 
woman who can look at the community as a whole, and 
who will resolve that he or she, as the case may be, 
will never rest until the whole community is brought 
up to the standard of the most advanced societies. Such 
a determined worker has the nucleus of the Civic 
Church under his own hat; but, of course, if he is to 
succeed in his enterprise he must endeavor by hook or 
by crook to get into existence some federation of the 
moral and religious forces which would be recognized by 
the community as having authority to speak in the 


The Conscience of Chicago. 347 

name and with the experience of the Civic Church. 
The work will of necessity be tentative and slow. Nor 
do I dream of evolving an ideal collective Humanitarian 
Episcopate on democratic lines all at once. But if the 
idea is once well grasped by the right man or woman, 
it will grow. The necessities of mankind will foster it, 
and all the forces of civilization and of religion will 
work for the establishment of the Civic Church.* 


*See Appendix D. 







« 





























CHAPTER II. 

“lead us not into temptation!’* 

What would Christ do if he came to Chicago? Surely 
he would endeavor to help to fulfil His own prayer. 

“ Read us not into temptation” is not a prayer which 
is regarded with much respect in the city administration 
of Chicago. It would be more accurate to say that the 
whole system from bottom to top has been constructed 
on the principle that it is a good thing to lead aldermen 
and officials into temptation on every possible occasion. 

To prove this it is only necessary to refer to the unre¬ 
stricted liberty which is given to a snap vote of the 
majority of the alderman to dispose of the common prop¬ 
erty of the city without any check excepting the mayor’s 
veto which is nugatory in case the majority in the 
council exceeds two-thirds. Another instance is the 
position of the assessors. An honest assessor cannot 
meet his expenses whereas a man need not be very dis¬ 
honest to make $100,000 during his term of office. If 
the aldermen and the assessors are to be kept from pick¬ 
ing and selling they must be removed from temptation. 
It is not fair to human nature to expose it to a stress and 
strain to which it has proved manifestly unequal. 

There is no reason in the nature of things why aider- 
men, for instance, should be exposed to that temptation. 
The Australian ballot has done much to purify Ameri¬ 
can elections from the scandalous abuses which pre¬ 
vailed when the ward politician was tempted by endless 
opportunities to stuff ballot boxes and to poll repeaters. 
If the City Council of Chicago would not be above tak¬ 
ing another hint from English-speaking men under the 
Union Jack they might remove much of the temptation 
to boodle which at present is altogether too strong to be 
resisted by the average alderman. 

349 


350 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

An ordinance of the city of Chicago conferring a 
franchise upon a company for the supply of gas, cor¬ 
responds to a private act of Parliament and it is both 
interesting and instructive to compare the precautions 
which are taken in England against such scandals 
as that which disgrace the city council with the 
rough and tumble methods which prevail in Chicago. 
The situation which prevails in Chicago is not unlike 
that which exists in an English city which is supplied 
with gas by a private company. 

No private bill is passed in England until it has been 
dealt with in quasi-judicial fashion by two impartial 
committees one selected from the Commons and the 
other from the House of Lords. Inexorably standing 
orders prevent any possibility of rushing the measure 
through the legislature without due consideration and 
ample opportunity being afforded to all sides to be heard 
before an impartial tribune of their own selection. 

Compare this with the hitty-missy, hugger-mugger 
fashion in which the recent boodle Gas ordinance was 
dealt with by the City Council. Somebody,nobody knows 
who,it may have been a man of straw, as mythical as John 
Doe or Richard Roe, thrusts a piece of paper into the 
hands of an alderman and asks him to bring this pro¬ 
posal as an ordinance before the attention of the City 
Council. This ordinance may affect adversely millions 
of dollars invested under the sanction of the Council 
under previous ordinances. It would certainly have 
affected for the worse all the conditions of existence in 
Chicago for years to come if it had been carried out. It 
decided once for all in a manner prejudicial to the inter¬ 
ests of the citizens, the price that they were to pay for 
all time to come for artificial light. This reckless and 
criminal proposal without any preliminaries is introduced 
into the Council, and then, without any opportunity 
being afforded for proving either the need of such 
an ordinance or of defending the bona fides of its 
promoters, this measure is thrust by a fine brute majority 


“Lead Us not into Temptation .” 351 

through the City Council in a single sitting. The exist¬ 
ing gas company had no opportunity of being heard in 
their own defense. The representatives of other interests 
vitally concerned in the case were never consulted; but 
at a single sitting, after a wrangle which could not be 
dignified by the name debate, a scratch majority, secured, 
it is universally believed, by out-and-out bribery of the 
grossest kind, passed the ordinance into law, and law it 
would have been but for the veto of the Mayor. No 
amount of standing orders and regulations can make 
rogues into honest men; but a very simple proposition, 
entirely in harmony with the principles of the American 
constitution and the charter of the city of Chicago, would 
remove three-fourths of the temptation before which the 
aldermen succumb. No man in his senses would dream 
of suggesting that the elaborate and cumbrous machinery 
of English private legislation should be transplanted to 
this western soil, but ordinary common sense would 
suggest that in every case where an ordinance was in¬ 
troduced, affecting either public or private interests, some 
adequate caution should be taken to prevent the pros¬ 
titution of legislation for the purposes of blackmail. 

It would not be difficult, for instance, to adopt so 
much of the principles of English private bill legislation 
as to insist that before any ordinance was introduced it 
should be submitted to the corporation counsel, say, one 
month before it was read before the City Council, and 
that he should stop its further progress until the pro¬ 
motors had done three things. First, to furnish full in¬ 
formation as to what they proposed to do, when they 
proposed to begin and finish, and how they were going 
to find the money. Secondly, to fully inform the local 
public of the proposed ordinance by means of advertise¬ 
ment, and to give notice to all persons whose property 
was affected or whose interests were endangered by the 
ordinance. Thirdly, to deposit with the City Treas¬ 
urer, say, 10 per cent of the total sum which they pro¬ 
pose to spend should they receive their franchise. Some 


352 If Christ Came to Chicago . 

such system would be simple, convenient and easily 
worked. After the ordinance had been introduced 
into the Council and had received the approval of a 
majority of the aldermen it might be referred to a quasi¬ 
judicial committee of four disinterested persons nomi¬ 
nated, say, two by the Mayor and two by the city 
council, who would be instructed to take evidence as 
to the proposed scheme, to hear everything that 
could be said against it by those whose interests it 
adversely affected, and to report back to the council as 
to whether or not it was to the public interest that the 
ordinance should pass. The final vote of the whole 
council on the ordinance as passed or amended by the 
committee could still remain as at present subject to the 
Mayor’s veto, which can only be over ridden by a 
majority of two-thirds. To adopt such a procedure 
would involve no fresh legislation, and would establish 
no new precedent at variance with constitutional 
practice. It would on the other hand give invested 
capital security which it does not possess at present 
against wild cat legislation, and the sand bagger and 
black mailer would find three-fourths of their business 
disappear. As to the aldermen it would in every case 
be a veritable answer to the petition “Lead us not into 
temptation.” From a boodle point of view the post of 
an alderman would hardly be worth having. 

That brings me to another consideration, namely, 
whether it would not be wiser and more economical in 
the long run to pay the alderman $5,000 a year rather 
than to leave them as at present to sacrifice millions of 
the property of the city in order that they may levy an 
illicit toll upon the plunder which they convey to pred¬ 
atory corporations. $5,000 a year would at least 
remove the temptation of picking and stealing from the 
alderman. At present they are paid three dollars a 
sitting of the Council. This takes no account of the much 
more arduous sittings in committees. As a matter of fact 
the $156 a year hardly supplies the alderman with drink 


“Lead Us not into Temptation .” 353 

money. In England no representative in Parliament or 
any municipality is paid for his services. The result is 
that a very heavy money fine is virtually imposed upon 
the most public spirited citizens who devote their time to 
the service of the community. They have to pay their 
election expenses to begin with, and as long as they 
represent the people they have to neglect their own busi¬ 
ness and sacrifice often half of their working time 
in the unpaid service of the people. Hence, among 
the English democracy there is a growing feeling 
in favor of the payment of members, not only on the 
ground of justice but in order that the community may 
be able to command the services of its ablest members 
without regard to the question whether or not they are 
sufficiently wealthy to stand the racket of election 
expenses and the loss on neglected business. In Chicago, 
considering that the wealthier classes, who alone can 
afford to serve the city for nothing, refuse to take any 
part in the city government, there is a great deal to be 
said in favor of paying the aldermen respectably if we 
expect them to live honestly. At present the aldermen 
regard themselves as morally justified in recouping 
the losses incurred in getting elected or in devoting 
their time to the public business by levying black mail 
on all those who are asking the people for franchises. 
And until the wealthier classes can be induced to come 
into politics, I fail to see any way out of it short of the 
adequate remuneration of the aldermen. 

With regard to the assessors and also to the assessed 
any attempt to realize our Lord’s prayer to lead them not 
into temptation, but to deliver them from evil would 
necessitate a radical revision of the whole system of 
assessment. At the present moment assessments are 
based upon a lie, and the whole superstructure is 
honeycombed through and through with dishonesty 
and perjury. The arbitrary power of assessment given to 
elected officials whose hopes of continuance in office 
depend entirely upon propitiating those whose property 


354 If Christ Came to Chicago . 

they assess would make thieves of archangels, and the 
assessors in the three towns of Chicago are not arch¬ 
angels. The result is that it is assumed that they are 
not honest and that they will take advantage of their 
positions to make money. The basis of a true system 
of assessment is very simple. Whether it is a matter of 
realty or personalty there exists an automatic method 
of assessment that lies ready at hand. Why not make 
every citizen his own assessor? The city might accept 
as final the sworn statement of each of its citizens as 
to the value of his possessions subject to the distinctly 
understood proviso that they might at any time be con¬ 
demned or appropriated at the figure at which the owner 
assessed them. By this means no citizen would dare to 
assess his property much below its real value. If he 
did so he would simply invite the condemnation of his 
own property for the benefit of the city. The law 
in that case instead of leading citizens into the tempta¬ 
tion of making false statements in order to dodge 
the taxes would practically tend to deliver them from 
the evil of inadequate assessment by holding over them 
in terrorem the possibility of having to sacrifice their 
goods and their real estate in return for an inadequate 
sum. Of course, provision might be made for heirloons 
and for some exceptional cases in which the sentimental 
value could not rightly be appraised for assessment pur¬ 
poses, and which at the same time it might be very 
cruel to condemn. But as a broad general principle, 
every man his own assessor, under penalty of ex-pro- 
priation at his own figures is a sound one, and would 
enormously simplify the question of assessment. 

Another great department of public administration in 
Chicago which stands in very serious need of being 
delivered from evil is that belonging to justice and the 
police. Law should be impartial and just. In Chicago 
it is neither one nor the other. The administration of 
the law should be resolute, and merciful, but whatever 
punishment is allotted should be enforced with the same 


“Lead Us not into Temptation 


355 


calm unswerving regularity which distinguishes the 
revolution of the planets. Almost every principle of 
sound jurisprudence is violated every day in the justices’ 
courts, both civil and criminal, in Chicago. Justices 
nominated for political considerations and swayed more 
or less shamelessly by partisan feelings set before the law¬ 
less members of the community a shameful object lesson 
in injustice and corruption. I do not mean for a moment 
to assert that the justice in any Chicago court would 
sentence an innocent man for a bribe, or that for so 
many dollars down he would deliver the guilty. But 
there is hardly a court in Chicago where a prisoner who 
has a political pull is not tolerably sure of escaping 
punishment, unless, of course, his crime has been too 
flagrant or too sensational for it to be safe for him to be 
liberated after the usual fashion. * But take the case 
of an ordinary offender. That man, if he stands in 
with an alderman or the owner of an alderman can 
almost always escape scotfree. For the sake of 
appearances lie will be fined but before the court rises 
his fine will be suspended indefinitely—that is it will be 
remitted. The practice of imposing fines and then sus¬ 
pending them is one which leads many justices into 

*At a meeting of the Sunset Club held March 31, 1892, Mr. W. S. Forrest read a 
paper based on his personal experience as a lawyer in the courts of the city of Chi¬ 
cago or rather of Cook County in which Chicago is situated. In the course of that 
paper he said: “There are wrongs in the administration of criminal law in Cook 
County, wrongs against the accused, wrongs against society, wrongs against the 
letter and spirit of the Constitution of the state. What are some of these wrongs? 
The rich and powerful are seldom indicted and never tried, well, hardly ever. The 
Criminal Court of Cook County exists only to punish the poor and the vulgar. 
Manslaughter is committed by corporations with impunity—Men are convicted 
who are innocent. Even in ordinary trials the forms of law are frequently set 
Aside and the rules of evidence ignored.” 

Gen. Stiles who followed Mr. Forrest confirmed his statement, and strengthened 
it. He said: “Brother Forrest complains that no rich merchants are ever con¬ 
victed. Don’t forget to mention that no prominent criminals are ever convicted. 
No prominent gambler is convicted. Three convictions would send him to the 
penitentiary, and they take mighty good care at the States Attorney’s office that 
no second conviction shall ever be had against an open, notorious and leading 
gambler in the city. No prominent confidence man is convicted. A man who kills 
another in a prominent saloon is hardly ever tried, never convicted and never was 
his worthless neck stretched at the end of a halter. The People must wake up. I don’t 
exactly want them to form a vigilance committee, but to go so almighty close to 
it that you can hardly tell the difference. Run out the riff raff, the gamblers, the 
men who live upon the honest toil of others. Put a stop to the frauds at elections. 
Run out of office men who are there only for the boodle that is in it. Do this and you 
will soon have a better order of things, and unless you do it yourselves no reform 
can be accomplished.’’ “Sunset Club Year Book 1891-2,” pp. 170, 181. 



356 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

temptation. It makes easy the way by which he is lead 
step by step to be a mere tool of party politicians. An 
appreciable step would be taken towards delivering the 
justice from the evil course into which he has fallen if 
he were compelled to make a monthly return of all fines 
which he has imposed and the fines which he has sus¬ 
pended, specifying in every case the reason for such 
suspension. It is an old saying that the progress of 
civilization may be measured by the extent to which 
the authority of impartial law supersedes arbitrary will 
of the individual in the judicial administration. Judging 
by the justices’ courts Chicago is still in the state of 
barbarism. Justice there in too many cases is the meas¬ 
ure of the justice’s foot modified by the conflicting 
influences of antagonistic political pulls. The evil is as 
great in civil as in criminal courts, if not greater A 
distinguished lawer quoted by the Chicago Herald , Feb. 
26th, says: 

The petty court or “justice shop’’system in Chicago and Cook 
County is the most iniquitous method that human ingenuity could 
have devised to oppress the poor, harass the financially distressed and 
annoy victims of spite and enmity. It is a reflection upon the fair 
fame of the city and a disgrace to the bar that such a condition of 
things should continue to exist. 

The Herald commenting on these remarks says: 

That the present system of administering justice in petty cases is a 
disgrace to the judicial system of this city is known to everybody, and 
is so patent to all that countless eiforts have been made to remedy the 
evils which it produces. The fundamental element of the evil, that is, 
the system itself, being based upon a constitutional provision, can¬ 
not be changed without an amendment to the constitution. 

That is usually the case in Chicago. Whenever you 
find a very unmistakable manifestation of the Devil, 
you are certain to find him entrenched behind the Consti¬ 
tution of the State of Illinois. 

If any change is to be made justices should be 
paid by salaries instead of as at present partly by salaries 
and partly by fees. The practice of giving the justices 
the interest of a solid silver dollar in every person 
whom they pull, or in every case they hear, is a crying 


“Lead Us not into Temptation." 357 

shame which has been denounced times without number 
but it remains today as yesterday the same. The 
temptation which leads police to make raids in order 
that they may net a sufficient harvest of dollars from 
the luckless captives of these arbitrary razzias is one 
into which the justices should not be led. 

These are a few of the more salient instances of 
maladministration of justice in which Chicago is dis¬ 
tinctly below the level of any European town. There 
are plenty of evils which the city shares with other cities 
in the Old World. The bureau of justice is an excellent 
and well meaning institution but unfortunately it has 
not the funds to enable it to discharge the duties of the 
poor man’s lawyer. Some day possibly just as the 
physicians in the community consider themselves 
honored by being allowed to practice for nothing in the 
city or county hospital so that day may come when the 
same standard of society may prevail among the legal 
profession, and the leading lawyers in the community 
may consider it a distinction to be allowed to practice 
without fees in the cases of the poor.* 

The last class of persons whom I shall consider as 
subjected to temptations from which they might be 
delivered by the same Christian and rational system is 
the police. At present it is almost impossible for the 
policeman to resist the temptation to supplement his 
salary by bribes. It may be taken as a general rule 
that whenever a law exists in the statute book that is 
not enforced that law is the source of pecuniary profit 
to all persons charged with the enforcement of the law. 


♦Speaking on this subject at a meeting of the Sunset Club March 31, 1892, Mr. 
Joseph B. David said: “ As one who has had a somewhat extended experience in 
the practice of criminal law in this county for the past seven years. I wish to say a 
word or two on the subject under discussion. No man who is tried in the Criminal 
Court of Cook County, who is without means to hire able lawyers, can get a fair 
trial The law of this state provides that when a man accused of crime is too poor 
to hire a lawyer the court shall appoint counsel to conduct his defense. What 
happens? A man who has just been admitted to the bar, who never tried a case in 
his life before, whose only knowledge of criminal law is gathered from a few 
months reading of text-books, such a man is appointed to cope with able counsel 
such as the States Attorney and his distinguished assistants. The result is inevit¬ 
able. The trial is a farce—a parody on justice.” 



358 If Christ Came to Chicago . 

Whether it be gamblers, or prostitutes, keepers of 
opium joints, or any other offender against the muni¬ 
cipal ordinances nothing is moie certain than that they 
have to pay for their immunity from prosecution by 
more or less political blackmailing levied by the police. 
The remedy for this can only be sought by bringing 
the written law into closer relation with that which can 
be actually enforced. A law ideally good may become 
the source of endless corruption when it is applied to a 
community that is really bad. It may be, for instance, 
considered an excellent thing that every house of prosti¬ 
tution, and every opium joint, and every gaming hell 
should be outlawed, and authority given to every 
member of the police force to suppress them whenever 
he finds them; but in communities where prostitution, 
opium smoking and gambling are deeply rooted the 
responsibility for the initiative in suppressing these 
evils should not rest upon individual policemen. It 
ought either to be placed under the responsible author¬ 
ity of neighboring citizens or of some body other than the 
officials charged with the execution of the law. To 
leave the initiative to the patrolmen is simply to ex¬ 
pose them to a temptation to levy blackmail to which 
in most cases they succumb. If, for instance, no house 
could be raided on the initiative of a private constable, 
and if in other cases the law could only be put in motion 
either by a citizen’s committee or by local residents the 
power to levy blackmail, and therefore the temptation 
to receive it would largely disappear. The greater the 
power the policemen have of exercising option in favor 
of or against the offenders the more increase of corrup¬ 
tion. The ideal police service is that in which the 
policeman should have no law to enforce excepting laws 
which he must enforce or be responsible for their 
non-enforcement. At present in Chicago the police¬ 
man is nominally expected to enforce an endless mul- 
plicity of ordinances which are openly set at nought 
by thousands of citizens every day, and every non- 


“Lead Us not into Temptation 359 

executed ordinance affords an opening for official black¬ 
mail. 

These evils and many others which might be described 
are admitted to exist by every observant citizen in 
Chicago. All the preaching in the world would fail to 
help our Lord to realize his own prayer in relation to 
those offenses. But what preaching cannot do, what 
the personal religion of the individual would be power¬ 
less to effect, civic religion practically applied by the 
election of honest men would assuredly accomplish. If 
then our churches and our Christians mean what they 
say when they pray “ Lead us not into temptation, but 
deliver us from evil,” is it not obvious that it is their 
Christian duty to go into politics and stay there until 
they have done something to help to fulfill their own 
prayers ? 

Obvious though it may appear to us, it is unfortu¬ 
nately the reverse of obvious to many good men. This 
winter at the Willard Hall in the Woman’s Temple a 
‘ * trophy’ ’ was produced in the shape of a confirmed 
drunkard who had found salvation through conversion. 
“Friends,” said this brand plucked from the burning, 

‘ ‘ I have been wonderfully delivered by the grace of God 
from the bondage of sin and Satan. All my life long I 
have been devoted to whisky and politics. Now, thanks 
be to God for his redeeming mercy, I am delivered from 
both.” There is small prospect of the redemption of 
the city when the first thought of the redeemed is to 
leave whisky in undisputed possession of politics. 




CHAPTER III. 

CASTING OUT DEVILS. 

They greatly err who imagine that the doctrine of 
diabolical possession is an exploded superstition. Not 
only individuals but communities are often the victims 
of this unhallowed appropriation by the Powers of Evil 
of that which was designed as the temple of the Holy 
Spirit. As in Judea in olden time the casting out of 
devils was one of the most manifest signs of the power 
of the Messiah, so to day if He were to appear amongst 
us in Chicago He would doubtless signalize His divine 
presence and power in a similar fashion. 

Chicago like other cities is possessed by a host of 
unclean spirits, whose name is Legion for they are 
many. There are several, however, which can be 
distinguished sufficiently to be named and described. 
These I will now proceed to enumerate with some brief 
suggestions as to their exorcism. 

First and foremost, Plutocracy. I came to America 
to see what Mr. Carnegie described as the Triumph of 
Democracy. I found instead the Evolution of Plutocracy. 
The new tyranny which is being installed behind 
the convenient mask of republican form is likely to cure 
itself by its own excess. Compound interest which if 
left undisturbed will concentrate the wealth of the 
world in the hands of a corporal’s guard of multi-billion¬ 
aires has already destroyed the distinctive glory of the 
American Republic. Nearly half of the once independ¬ 
ent proprietors of their own holdings are now tenants 
of these usurers without tenant’s rights. 

According to the lastest Government statistics, we 
possess sixty billions of wealth. Nine per cent of the 
families own 71 per cent of this, leaving but 29 per cent 
to the remaining 91 per cent of the families. The 9 

361 


362 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

per cent is composed of two classes: rich and million- 
airs. Of the latter there are 4,074 families. They aver¬ 
age three million dollars each. They constitute only 
three one-hundredths of 1 per cent of the whole number 
of families, while they own 20 per cent of the wealth. 
That is, they own nearly as much as the 11,593,887 
families. 

The process of accumulation goes on irresistibly. 
The snow ball gathers as it grows. Even spendthrifts 
and prodigals cannot dissipate the unearned increment 
of their millions which multiply while they sleep. The 
millionaire is developing into the billionaire, and the 
end is not yet. The transformation is hidden from the 
multitude because the coming despot eschews the tawdry 
tinsel of the crown, and liberty is believed to be as safe 
as well, let us say, as the populace of Rome believed 
the republic to be when Julius Caesar refused the 
imperial purple. But everywhere the money power has 
the people by the throat. Whether it is the pawnbroker 
down the levee, charging ten per cent, per month 
interest upon the pledges of the poor, or the millionaire, 
negotiating with newspapers for the abandonment of 
the Interstate Commerce Act, the spectacle is the same. 
The poor man is the servant of the rich, and at present 
stands in some danger of becoming his slave. 

Plutocracy in America even more than in England, to 
which I have already compared it, recalls Victor Hugo’s 
memorable description of the octopus. Victor Hugo 
was a great artist in words and he described the octopus 
from life. Had he described it from his observation of 
plutocracy in America he would not have altered a 
single sentence. This description of this spectral 
phantom of the deep, the devil fish, with its eight huge 
arms, with its four hundred pustules that cut and suck 
like a cupping glass, this loathly horror of vampire- 
death lurking in ocean caves to seize the limb and drain 
the life of the unwary fisherman, is only too true to life 
as many an unfortunate will recognize. 


Casting out Devils . 363 

It winds around its victim, covering him and enveloping him in 
its slimy folds. ... It is a spider in its shape, a chameleon in its 
rapid changes of hue. When angry it becomes purple. Its most 
disgusting characteristic is its impalpability. Its slimy folds strangle; 
its very touch paralyzes. It looks like a mass of scorbutic gangrened 
flesh; it is a hideous picture of loathsome disease. Once fixed you 
cannot tear it away. It clings closely to its prey. How does it do 
so? By creating a vacuum. ... It is a pneumatic machine that 
attacks you. You are struggling with a void which possesses eight 
antennae. No scratches, no bites, but an indescribable suffocation. 
The terrible wretch grins upon you by a thousand foul mouths. The 
hydra incorporates itself with the man, and the man with the hydra. 
You become one and the same. The hideous dream is in your 
bosom. The devil fish draws you into its system. He drags you to 
him and into him; bound helplessly, glued where you stand, utterly 
powerless, you are gradually emptied into a loathsome receptacle, 
which is the monster himself. . . . The devil fish is a hypocrite. 

Nothing can be more hypocritical than the way in 
which plutocracy disguises its designs, until its victim 
is well within its reach. It has already flung its all de¬ 
vouring tentacles round almost every institution in the 
United States. Some it has devoured, others it is pre¬ 
paring to engulf. Among the latter that which most 
excites my sympathy and dismay is the last refuge of 
independent criticism in the domain of sociological 
study. I refer to the universities. Among the younger 
university professors in America there are many who 
have devoted themselves to a life long study of the 
sociological phenomena. They know and appreciate 
the advantages of municipal monopolies as opposed to 
the monopoly of the predatory rich. They have been 
most of them in the old world, and they have learned the 
lessons which the most progressive of the municipalities 
of the Old World have to teach the cities of the new. They 
are devoted to the cause of labor and of social progress. 
They write and teach the necessity of dealing with the 
problems of labor in a sympathetic spirit, of making 
the municipality the ideal employer and of leveling up 
all other employers to the municipal level. They are 
in favor of everything or nearly everything that I have 
advocated in this book, for municipal gas, municipal 
water, municipal street cars, municipal telephones 


364 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

and in short for the municipalization of all the monop¬ 
olies of service. Nowhere in the world will you find 
more thoughtful and fearless exponents of the new 
economics than in the American universities. Con¬ 
trasted with the servile subjugation in which most of 
the slaves of the press are kept by their plutocratic 
owners, the university is as an oasis in the desert, 
a fresh green spot in the midst of an arid waste of 
sand. How long will this oasis be permitted to con¬ 
tinue? I am afraid that when the battle becomes 
hotter, and the hosts now being arrayed against each other 
grapple in the struggle for life and death, it will go 
hard with these teachers of truth. For the endow¬ 
ment of the universities is one of the fashionable 
pastimes of the American millionaire. Vanderbilt has 
given his name to a university in the South, and 
Rockefeller—the story of whose Standard Oil Trust will 
some day be given to the public in all its infamy of 
detail, and continental grandeur of rapacity, by some 
Zola of reality who will discover in it one of the most 
interesting episodes in all history—is the great patron 
of the University of Chicago. There is hardly a univer¬ 
sity in the country which has not either received large 
sums from millionaires or which does not live from day 
to day in the hope of receiving large sums from mil¬ 
lionaires. Universities like every other institution in 
the country are “on the make,” and just as the modern 
Herod becomes a pew holder and gags John the 
Baptist by starving him out of the pulpit, a much more 
efficacious method than the ax of the executioner, so 
the predatory rick have intrenched themselves in the 
citadels of the American universities.. 

I heard a story the other day which is significant of 
much. A well known millionaire who was one of the 
trustees of an eastern university met at one of the 
university functions a professor to whom he freely 
expressed his opinion that it was a very good thing that 
there were half a million men out of work in the United 




Casting out Devils . 365 

States. By such a condition of affairs the laboring 
men could be kept down. The professor shocked by 
the cynicism of the avowal strongly controverted the 
millionaire’s view unmindful of the fact that the million¬ 
aire was a trustee of the university. 

Shortly after the professor ventured to publish an 
article in which he formulated the right of the laboring 
man to be shielded from being dismissed at the mere 
caprice of his employer. This article was made sufficient 
cause to compel him to leave the university. He was 
not dismissed, but strong representations were made by 
the millionaire in question to his fellow trustees that 
this professor must be cleared out. The board, like 
Pilate, was loath to yield to the pressure of the modern 
Caiaphas, but ultimately the professor, for peace’s sake, 
resigned his post and accepted another in a state 
university in the west which he still holds. A vacancy 
occurred quite recently in his old university and it was 
mooted that it might be well to invite the professor to 
return. But the suggestion was immediately negatived. 
The millionaire would have no such pestilent fellow 
about his place. 

Another instance also came to my notice quite recently. 
One of the younger professors who had taken a very 
energetic and honorable part in the agitation for the 
municipal ownership of the monopolies of service, was 
warned by the representative of a great trust, that he 
had better take care what he was doing. Articles which 
he had published had attracted the attention of the 
combine and they were considerably alarmed at the 
effect which they had upon their invested capital. He 
told his friend quite frankly that if he continued in his 
present course they would have to down him. He 
regretted it very much but he said “there is no doubt it 
is a financial necessity and we shall have to down you” 
for the trusts and corporations have a curious knack 
of using even the phrases of the Camorra and other 
associations of assassins. Not, of course, that the 



366 If Christ Came to Chicago . 

Professor was to be assassinated. I have been assured 
that the predatory rich do not shrink even from 
using the sandbag and the revolver — of course by 
deputies. That, however, is not a very usual method. 
They prefer to starve a man out. It costs less and does 
not make so much scandal. Under these circumstances 
it is not surprising that the professor feels that a Dam¬ 
ocles sword is hanging over his head. If these things 
are done in the green tree what will be done in the dry? 
It remains to be seen whether the university which 
should be before everything else the home of free and 
independent thought is to be subjected as completely by 
the money power as the City Council of Chicago or the 
newspaper press of America. For the sake of the Amer¬ 
ican people and the evolution of society in the United 
States I sincerely hope that the various faculties charged 
with the control of higher education in the republic, 
may stand to their guns and may prove themselves 
proof alike against the menace and the bribes of the 
plutocrats. 

To check this stealthy but rapid encroachment on 
popular liberty, and to cast out this demon, is the task 
which lies before American patriots at the close of this 
century. Of one demon it was said this kind goeth out 
by prayer and fasting, and it is so with plutocracy. Of 
fasting we have had but a foretaste. When to that is 
added enough prayerful, earnest wrestling with the 
Throne of Grace as leads the men who pray to vote 
as they pray, the way of escape will appear. But 
there must be more fasting and more prayer than 
there has yet been if the grasp of the Octopus with 
its myriad arms is to be loosened from the throat 
of the republic. At present the plutocrat is supreme 
because the democracy is divided and apathetic. Nor 
has “ the sense of power from boundless suffering 
wrung” yet given the masses of the despoiled courage 
to resent their wrongs. Here in Chicago the first obvious 
step is to insist upon the readjustment of the burden of 


Casting oat Devils. 367 

taxation so that wealth may no longer shift its share 
upon the shoulders of the poor. The next is to resume 
as rapidly as possible all the franchises and other sources 
of revenue which have been stolen from the people by 
corrupting their representatives and to peremptorily 
veto all further appropriation of the wealth of the many 
for the profit of the few. When the democracy is dis¬ 
ciplined enough and has established sufficient confi¬ 
dence in its leaders to do these two things, it may safely 
be trusted to discover ways and means to carry out the 
rest of the programme of its emancipation. 

The second devil which today needs exorcism is one 
I did not expect to find in a civilized and progressive 
country. 

We rid ourselves of it so long ago in the old coun¬ 
try that it was startling to find that it had simply mi¬ 
grated to the New World. Of all the folklore tales of 
Europe the most horrible is that of the Vampire of the 
Levant. The vampire is the reanimated corpse of an 
evil doer which is doomed to leave the tomb and return 
to the living in order that with livid lips he shall draw in 
the life blood from the veins of his sleeping friends. In 
the A. P. A., that strange association for the protection 
of American citizens which seems to have within its 
ranks far more Canadians and Orangemen from Ulster 
and Glasgow than native-born citizens of the United 
States, always reminds me of that restless vampire of 
southeastern Europe. No-Popery fanaticism died fifty 
years ago in England. We imagined it dead and bur¬ 
ied. But here is the vampire thing making night hid¬ 
eous by revisiting the pale glimpses of the moon in 
western America. It is the same old demon, with its 
familiar hoof and horns and tail, scaring the old women 
of both sexes with the bogey of impending massacre 
and of the domination of sixty millions by six. To 
avert the menaced St. Bartholomew the Protestant 
Mayor of Toledo and many of the A. P. A.’s in that 
city laid in a stock of Winchester rifles, a fact of which 


368 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

the public only recently became aware owing to the 
reluctance or inability of these doughty champions to 
pay for their guns after they had been delivered. 
Ridicule ought to be the best means for exorcising 
this belated survival of antiquated bigotry. To 
lay a vampire the Greeks say it is necessary to drive 
long nails into the quivering carcass of the Dead-Alive. 
When the last nail is driven home the vampire walks 
no more. There are several nails of hard fact and solid 
sense which intelligent and patriotic citizens should 
drive up to the head into the A. P. A. The first is that 
this is a land of liberty, where the whole armed force 
at the disposal of the authorities will be used to protect 
freedom of speech even when it is as much abused as it 
sometimes is by A. P. A. lecturers. And the Catholics 
of all men should be foremost in demanding that no 
mob shall be allowed to interfere in their name with the 
utterances of their enemies. The second is the fact 
that this anti-Catholic propaganda is chiefly the work of 
non-Americans who, finding no field for the reception 
of their pernicious nonsense in Cardinal Manning’s 
country, are endeavoring to palm off upon the New 
World the cast-off trumpery for which we have no more 
use on our side of the water. But the third and by far 
the most effective nail in the coffin of this propaganda 
of distrust, malice and all uncharitableness is to refuse 
absolutely to batten upon the bones of the martyrs of 
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and to insist con¬ 
stantly upon the immense and but little recognized serv¬ 
ices which the Catholic Church is rendering to humanity 
and to civilization here and now. To hate your brother 
who is doing Christ’s work here in Chicago because his 
great-great-grandfather burned your great-great-grand- 
uncle three centuries since in Europe is hardly rational 
and not at all Christian. This devil, however, will 
disappear, like the materialized spectres of the seance 
room, if you simply turn on the light. 

After Plutocracy and Religious Intolerance, there is 


Casting out Devils. 369 

the devil of Intemperance. In Chicago there is said to 
be sixty millions of dollars spent every year in intox¬ 
icants. The victims of strong drink are to be found in 
the Olympian heights where the millionaires dwell and 
in the humblest homes. Dr. Keeley is curing thousands 
of the craving for drink, and by his success has paved 
the way for numbers of rivals. But to cast the demon 
of intemperance out of individuals is not enough. 
There is the community to be considered, what is to 
be done with the saloon ? 

In Chicago the question was one of the most hotly 
debated of all those on which I touched. What I said 
to the prohibitionist was simply this: “ Prohibit where 
you can and where you cannot prohibit do as much as 
you can in that direction. But remember that the 
saloon is not to be got rid of by swearing at it. The 
true policy is to recognize the need to which it minis¬ 
ters and to put something better in its place.” 

Nothing but harm can come from a foolish refusal to 
look the facts in the face. And the facts which the pro¬ 
hibitionists ignore is that with all its faults the saloon 
is ministering to many great wants of the citizens which 
the church ignore. In many neighborhoods the saloon 
is the only parlor and the only club of the working peo¬ 
ple. It is their solitary place of recreation. They shel¬ 
ter therein the wet and cold, they meet their friends there, 
and read the papers. Chicago is abominably ill sup¬ 
plied with lavatories and similar conveniences. The 
saloon is the only place where a poor man can wash his 
face outside his own house, and the only substitute 
there is for the retiring rooms which every city should 
establish as necessary conveniences. Bad as the saloon is 
it holds the field and deserves to hold it until there is 
at least one temperance saloon in every precinct. There 
are 800 precincts and 7,000 saloons. But in all Chicago 
there are not seventy temperance resorts such as the 
Teetotums of London, the cafes of Liverpool andthe coffee 
parlors and cocoa palaces of many English towns. Until 


370 


If Christ Came to Chicago. 

the temperance people put something better in the place 
of the saloon, the saloon will never be got rid of. 

Failing the wholesale extirpation of the saloon can 
nothing be done to exorcise the worse evils which 
attend the sale of drink ? I am too keenly sen¬ 
sible of the miseries of intemperance to dare to advise 
that nothing should be tried until everything can be 
accomplished. The evil is too terrible such for fooling 
as this. 

No remarks of mine excited more general discussion 
or evoked stronger dissent than a passing observation I 
made at the Central Music Hall Conference in Novem¬ 
ber concerning the saloons. It was made the theme of 
much animadversion in the temperance press and on 
the temperance platform. Suppose there are three 
saloons. Grant that they are all diabolic because all 
sell intoxicants, and you have only two prohibitionist 
votes, what are you to do?* If you insist on closing 
them all, you will close none, for two men cannot out¬ 
vote three. But suppose that while all the saloons are 
strongholds of Satan because they sell beer, No. i is a 
clean, well conducted place to which, excepting for the 


* An important decision in the Indiana Supreme Court, as to the nuisance of 
saloons, which suggests a possibility of getting rid of the saloons even when they 
have a majority was pronounced in December 1893. The facts are as follows 
(summarized from the Chicago Tribune , December 24):—An Indianapolis woman 
owned a house on a residence street of that city. There were no saloons in the 
neighborhood. The owner of the adjoining lot built a store on it and started a 
saloon there. He did this against the united protest of the people in the neighbor¬ 
hood. The authorities said that they could not refuse to grant him a license, 
because the law, there as here, is that a man who has “a good moral character” and 
pays the license money is entitled to a license. 

Thereupon the woman brought suit for damages, alleging that the saloon was 
a nuisance and that it hurt the rental and selling value of her property. The 
defendant claimed that he was licensed pursuant to law, and as long as he did not 
keep a disorderly place he was not amenable to any law; if neighboring property 
was damaged it was something for which he was not responsible. The lower court 
found for the defendant, and so did the Supreme Court at first, but on a rehearing 
reversed itself, and decided in favor of the plaintiff. 

The court holds now that while the Legislature has the right to license saloons, 
the saloon business is an immoral one and is licensed iu order that the citizen may 
have some protection against the evils from the unrestrained sale of liquor. It 
could not be assumed that it was the intention of the Legislature to place the sale 
of spirits above the rights of the citizen and make him endure a nuisance and sub¬ 
mit to loss for the benefit of the saloonkeeper. Hence the court says in conclusion: 

If the saloon causes property to depreciate in value it is a nuisance within the 
law and can be abated. Not only that, but the person who operates the saloon is 
liable in damages to the injured party and the measure of damages is the measure 
of injury to the property. 



Casting out Devils . 371 

sale of drink, no objection can be taken; No. 2 runs a 
gaming hell and No 3 runs both a gaming hell and a 
house of prostitution. Here two prohibitionists are con¬ 
fronted with three saloons, possessed respectively by one, 
two and three devils. Why not ally yourselves with No. 

1 to vote No. 2 and No. 3 out of existence? “No cove¬ 
nant with hell?” Well, the result of that policy of re¬ 
fusing to use a single barrelled devil of the good 
saloon to cast out the double and triple barrelled 
devils of gaming and prostitution and drink is that 
all three will go on running and you are responsible 
for that. 

Some criticism was offered chiefly on the grounds 
that such a policy would give a monopoly to No. 1. To 
which my reply is make him pay for it, and if you are 
wise enough make him your paid agent, for I am as I 
have been since 1873, a sworn advocate of the Norwegian 
system of dealing with the license question. To avoid 
monopoly municipalize the saloon! This, however, by 
the way. 

The argument has also been used that this would 
involve the municipalizing or the licensing at least of 
the house of ill-fame. But that is absurd. There is a 
distinction as wide as the poles between the saloon and 
the brothel. No one in his senses can assert that to 
drink a glass of beer is a mortal sin, whereas every 
Christian recognizes that a house of ill-fame exists 
expressly and solely in order to facilitate direct 
breaches of the moral law. Of course those who do 
hold that it is a mortal sin to drink a glass of beer under 
any circumstances are quite right in refusing to license 
saloons or to accept any responsibility for their exist- 
ance. But all who admit that the drinking of beer 
although terribly liable to abuse may be indulged in 
without sin are bound to do what they can to control 
the supply and minimize the evils of the traffic. That 
is why I have sometimes said that the ideal church 
would run a saloon. For if the sale of drink where it 


372 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

cannot be prohibited is so dangerous a business, it 
ought to be in the hands of the very salt of the earth. 
It takes a very elect saint to make a saloon a means of 
grace. A man good enough to be a minister, may fall 
far short of the ideal standard required for the saloon 
business. And as the church was founded to produce 
saints for the world’s salvation it is right that the church 
should see to it that if the saloon is to exist it should 
be in the hands of men who will not make it a curse and 
a scourge to the community.* 

The temperance element expected that the city would go dry at the 
municipal election and made no more than a perfunctory effort to get 
out the vote. The liquor men, on the other hand, put a large amount 
of money into their campaign and won the city for license, to the sur¬ 
prise of everybody. The temperance element was chagrined. And 
in this novel and perhaps effective way they will harass their oppo¬ 
nents. 

They will fit up one of the largest stores in the heart of the city as 
a saloon. This they will stock with the best liquors and beers of all 
brands. An efficient business man will be put in charge, and behind 
the counter will be a dozen expert drink mixers. Prices will be as 
follows : Mixed drinks and fine wines, 5 cents; liquors, plain, 3 cents; 
beer, 2 cents; ponies, 1 cent. Bottled goods will be sold at cost, and 
no profits will be expected from sales, except sufficient to pay for the 
running expenses, as the rent, fixtures, advertising, and license fee 
will be paid for by subscription. 

In this way the promoters hope to draw enough customers from the 
other saloons to ruin their business. This may be the more easily 
effected as all who take out licenses have to pay $ 2,000 each May i,and 
it takes considerable time to get the equivalent back in ordinary bus¬ 
iness. The trade is extremely lucrative here. The law limits the 
number of licenses to one to every 1,000 inhabitants, which gives 
Haverhill twenty-seven liquor shops, but as all the neighboring cities 
and towns connected by electric roads regularly vote no license the 
trade here supplies a population of 100,000 persons. The projectors 
have $1, 400 already subscribed toward the saloon. 

During my stay in Chicago, Mayor Eustis of Minneap¬ 
olis passed through the city on his way to New York. 
Before I was aware that he had arrived he had departed. 
But the previous day I read in the papers the following 


* A Chicago paper published a special telegram dated Haverhill, Massachusetts, 
Dec. 23, describing a curious development of temperance activity in the heart of a 
prohibition district. I wrote to Haverhill but I have received no reply; the story 
may be an invention. I quoted, however, as indicating a possible use of the com¬ 
petitive principle for the destruction of the vested interest of the saloonkeeper 
which may be more useful in England than in Chicago. 



Casting out Devils. 373 

interesting expression of opinion in an interview with 
Mayor Eustis: 

“We are operating under the Stead plan of local government,” 
said he, “and strange to say we adopted the policy before we ever 
heard of Stead or his ideas. By conferences with the liquor dealers’ 
associations we have succeeded in closing up all tough saloons and 
stopped robberies and fights that had taken place in them every day. 
In this way all thieves, swindlers and thugs have been driven from 
town. Ministers took offense because I refused to close the back doors 
of saloons on Sunday. I believe men will drink on Sunday if they 
wish, and if one door be closed another will be opened. I preferred 
to employ the saloon-keepers as allies in trying to bring about a decent 
government. How I have succeeded may be seen from the police 
court records. One year will develop statistics to show the correctness 
or error of my position.” 

I wrote at once to the mayor asking him for further in¬ 
formation, and he was good enough to write me a long 
and most interesting letter which is a most valuable 
contribution to the solution of a very knotty problem. 
The best way of fighting the saloon is to put something 
better in its place. It is a great delusion to imagine that 
the need of social centers or public rooms is only confined 
to laboring men. The modern club of the middle and 
upper classes show that the need is felt by them and not 
even the conveniences of the American hotels are sufficient 
to meet the needs of the situation. Hotels and clubs have 
alike one great disadvantage, they are both places in which 
treating goes on as a matter of course. If intemperance 
is to be successfully exorcised provision must be made 
for supplying a meeting place without drink. An 
admirable example of what can be done in this way is 
supplied by the Commerce Club, in the Auditorium 
Building. This institution has no bar but it has 
all the other conveniences of an ordinary club with 
the additional advantage that it can be used by both 
sexes. 

A number of such institutions with moderate terms— 
the subscription to the Commerce Club is only $20 for 
resident and $12 for non-residents, while $100 secures a 
life membership—scattered about the city would have a 
wholesome effect. Having used the Commerce Club 


374 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

every day for months I gladly testify to the fact that it 
is the most convenient place I have ever seen in any 
city. It is a model of what such an institution should be. 

The exorcising of the gaming fiend so far as public 
gaming hells go is easier than that of dealing with other 
vices which perplex the moral reformer. The experience 
of Europe suffices to prove that the public gaming house 
can be suppressed by law without any difficulty. The 
experience of Chicago from the 6 th of January to the i ath 
of February shows that open gaming can be suppressed 
by the mere fiat of the Mayor. That every gaming house 
in Chicago is not shut up tight at this moment is due to 
those who are charged with the enforcement of the law. 
The law itself leaves nothing to be desired on the score 
of stringency. 

There is practically unanimity on the part of the re¬ 
spectable and decent people, that open gaming houses are 
an evil, this is admitted as frankly by the newspapers as 
it is by preachers, nor is it only journalists and ministers 
who have expressed a clear opinion on the subject. 

East December the grand jury in Mr. Justice Bren- 
tano’s court investigated the subject, drew up a report 
which concluded with a very emphatic condemnation of 
the system and a practical proposal for dealing with the 
evil. The following is the closing passage of that report. 

This conflicting testimony from officials charged with the respon¬ 
sible duty of enforcing the laws of the state and ordinances of the 
city wisely enacted for the purpose of protecting the persons, prop¬ 
erty and morals of the people from the vicious and criminal classes 
so closely associated with gambling, together with evidence of sev¬ 
eral other subordinates, who confessed to honest efforts to earn their 
salaries by preventing “crap,” “brace” and “copper” operations 
(terms not fully understood by all the grand jurors), led us unani¬ 
mously to the conclusion that there is collusion between the police 
force of the city and the gamblers so general and wide that its “devil 
fish” tentacles reach to a large portion of the police force. In a 
community claiming the concomitants of civilization there ought to 
be sufficient moral and legal power to locate the head center of offi¬ 
cial collusion with gambling and smite it to the death. While any 
portion of the police force is under suspicion of this conspiracy— a 
“combine” which hesitates not at the crime of perjury—no citizen 
can feel a sense of security in life or property; and inasmuch as 


375 


Casting out Devils . 

grand juries of the regular panel have as much as they can do, or 
more, with the regular docket cases, we suggest the calling of a spe¬ 
cial grand jury for the sole purpose of considering the subject of 
gambling and the relation of the city police thereto, as herein set 
forth. 

We have, therefore, a very favorable condition of 
things. The law is all right; public opinion is all right; 
the Mayor wishes to do everything he can to suppress 
it; and Chief Brennan’s orders are all right, what¬ 
ever they may be worth. The grand jury which has 
reported on the subject so emphatically declares that 
there ought to be sufficient moral power to locate the 
head sinner of official collusion with the gambler and 
smite him to the death; and further, the grand jury has 
indicated the way in which this can be done, viz., by 
the calling of a special grand jury for the sole purpose 
of considering the subject. The state’s attorney or 
any judge on the bench can act upon this recommenda¬ 
tion. Judge Brentano, upon whom would naturally 
devolve the calling of such a grand jury, has been 
engaged with the trial of Prendergast so long that he has 
not had time to look into the matter. He stated, how 
ever, that it was his opinion that, 

The report reveals a state of affairs that should be investigated 
without delay, and if the regular juries cannot find time to do it no 
time should be lost in calling twenty-three men who can devote their 
entire time to an honest inquiry into a matter that so much concerns 
the public welfare. 

What, then, is still needed in order to put the 
machinery of the law in motion? Here we have some 
help from an unexpected quarter. The late Carter 
Harrison in defending his policy made a notable speech 
which may well be taken into account by all those who 
are interested in this question. He said: 

Those who have so vigorously cried out for its extermination have 
failed to suggest any possible or practicable plan by which the desired 
end can be accomplished, and they forget that every effort at its anni¬ 
hilation has been a dismal failure. * * * Considering what the 

results had been, I came to the conclusion, on becoming Mayor, that 
the evil must be kept within proper bounds and restrictions. More 
than that, I determined to restrict these houses to the central portion 


376 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

of the city, where they could be closely watched and kept in check. 
By this course of procedure I had in view the easy and unrestricted 
entrance of either the police, to detect sharp practices by the gamblers, 
keep minors out and find any crooked persons who might seek its 
enchantments, or of business men, who might desire to see whether 
an employe was squandering money surreptitiously taken from their 
funds. By such a course as I have thus outlined I have had the 
endorsement of a large number of citizens and the results have been 
far better than they would have been under different conditions. 
Under the apparent rigid rule in vogue in 1873 there were in the city 
forty-four gambling establishments and twenty odd bunko places; in 
1877 over thirty gambling-houses and a dozen or more bunko-rooms, 
while during 1888 there have not been seventeen of the former and 
not a single bunko room. The present state of affairs here is due to 
restrictions, and while a great number of complaints came to my 
office shortly after my inauguration, there have been not more than a 
half dozen within the past eighteen months. The plan of keeping 
these places in the heart of the city enables the police officers to learn 
where brace boxes are played upon unsuspecting victims. Such 
houses are promptly dealt with. Those that run are put upon their 
good behavior; minors are excluded, and those who must play pro¬ 
tected from the tricks of dealers, and games of a character calculated 
to attract the man of small means entirely prevented. 

After having laid down his position and stated the 
ground upon which he defended it he then proceeded 
to suggest the natural and proper course to be taken by 
those who have differed from him, if they had the 
courage of their convictions and were determined to 
have their way. 

I am not defending gambling per se, but if I am wrong in my 
position in dealing with it from a practical standpoint, the people 
have their remedy. They can appeal to an authority higher than 
mine, and strange it is that such citizens and newspapers as have 
assailed me have not also directed their batteries toward that author¬ 
ity. Those who think my plan not the best have a state law under 
which any one so disposed can take his hand in suppressing gambling. 
I fear, however, that Mr. Lincoln was not mistaken when he said that 
“statutory enactments can’t turn a calf’s tail into a third hind leg.” 
The fireside, the lyceum and the well-stocked public library will do 
more than laws to suppress social evils. 

That is to say, Mr. Harrison points to the same 
remedy which Rev. O. P. Gifford referred to in his speech 
at Willard Hall. Under the law of the State of Illinois it 
is quite possible for any association of citizens, or for 
any individual to swear in police for a special purpose 
to enforce any law which may be violated, and to emolo> 


Casting out Devils. 377 

these police to raid the gambling houses and prose¬ 
cute the gamblers under the law of the State of Illinois. 
There is no necessity of doing this on a very extensive 
scale. If one prominent gaming house were raided and 
its proprietors prosecuted, not once, but twice or thrice 
in succession—until they had qualified for Joliet—that 
would settle matters. Gamblers do not mind in the 
least being fined; they have a strong objection to being 
sent to the Penitentiary. After a second or third convic¬ 
tion they would be sent to prison and when once it was 
well understood that every leading gambler in the town 
would be taken in turn and prosecuted with the utmost 
rigor of the law until his career is terminated by incar¬ 
ceration, Mr. Hopkins would be able to realize his 
pious wish for the suppression of public gambling and 
the city would be rid of one of its most conspicuous 
plagues. 

Of course, this work should be undertaken by the 
constituted authorities, but if the constituted authorities 
fail in their duty, as they have habitually done in Chi¬ 
cago, then the duty of action would devplve upon 
the committee of the Federation charged with moral 
questions, of which committee, by the by, the chairman 
is none other than the Rev. O. P. Gifford. 

The open air gaming hell which is carried on on 
the public race tracks—a much more difficult ques¬ 
tion, owing to the element of innocent amusement that 
enters into it—and the “respectable” speculation which 
is but another term for the gambling on the Board of 
Trade—equally difficult from the element of business 
which pervades it—are much more insoluble problems. 
But the fact that it is difficult or impossible to deal 
with racing is no reason why so simple and obvious 
measures as the closing of public hells should not be 
carried out. The machinery is there, the law is clear, 
and all that is necessary is for some one to put it in 
operation, who has a steady hand, cool head and reso¬ 
lute heart. 


378 If Christ Came to Chicago , 

The Social Evil usually so called is one of those 
problems which confront the administrator in every land 
and which are satisfactorily solved in none. In Chi¬ 
cago it is not greater than elsewhere, and in some 
respects it is manifestly reduced to smaller proportions. 

There is very little street walking in the ordinary 
sense of soliciting on the streets in Chicago. I went 
about the town at all times of the night and in many 
of the thoroughfares which have the worst reputation 
in this respect, and I had nothing to complain of. This 
result, however, is obtained by practically sacrificing 
the liberty of the single woman in the streets of 
Chicago at night. A woman sauntering or gossiping 
with a friend in the streets of Chicago at night is liable 
to be arrested by the police, in virtue of no ordinance, 
for the law is singularly weak, but in virtue of the high 
and singular power with which every police officer in 
Chicago seems to be invested to arrest anybody with¬ 
out the slightest risk of penalty for false imprisonment, 
at least when the person arrested is a woman. No 
corroborative evidence ever seems to be asked for on 
the charge of molestation which is alleged against the 
street walker by her captor. The rule enforced in 
London police courts is that a woman shall not be 
arrested for molestation and annoyance unless the 
person molested and annoyed will appear against her. 
This rule does not prevail in Chicago. Street walkers 
are outside the law and the question as to whether a 
woman is a street walker or not, is decided according 
to the arbitrary caprice of the policeman. He has only 
to swear that he has seen her soliciting. No other 
testimony is required. The woman may deny the 
accusation as much as she pleases. It is only her word 
against the policeman’s, and he can, as a rule, obtain 
a brother officer to swear to anything that he pleases. 
The habit of levying black mail is almost universal. 
On Wabash avenue the officers “pinch,” to use the 
technical term, girls regularly unless they pay up 


379 


Casting out Devils . 

regularly. “Pony up or we will run you in,” is the 
formula which secures the requisite backsheesh to the 
officers of the law. A woman in thriving business will 
pay up $10 to the policeman, while those who are not 
doing so well are allowed to compound for $2 or $3 
as the case may be. Refusal to pay simply lands the 
unfortunate in the police cell every time she puts her 
face outside the door. One very bad case on Wabash 
avenue was one in which a girl had quarrelled with the 
police. She refused to give them their black mail, was 
arrested on one occasion when going to a drugstore* 
Shortly afterwards they broke into her house and said 
that if they could not get her on the street they would 
take her in her home. 

In all great cities it is the same. Where arbitrary power 
of arrest is given to the policeman, and no confirmatory 
evidence is required by the justices in convicting those 
whom they accuse, the street walker proves a great reve¬ 
nue to the policeman. I have been disillusioned as to 
American freedom. There is much more freedom in Lon¬ 
don than in Chicago, and any girl, say a typewriter 
or a work girl, can go from one end of London to the 
other at any hour of the night, with much less chance 
of molestation by policemen or by other people, than 
she can go through Chicago. Victor Hugo said 
truly, long ago, that it was a delusion to believe that 
slavery had vanished from the earth. It still exists, 
he said, only they call it prostitution. These women 
are as much slaves of the police as was any negro on a 
cotton plantation before the war. The idea that a prosti¬ 
tute has as much right to be treated with justice as any 
other human being, is a conception that has not yet 
dawned upon the mind of the average man. The day 
upon which immoral men are subjected to the same 
arbitrary authority, without a hope of redress or chance 
of escape, that these women are subjected to, would 
see the beginning of a revolt. But women are 
weak, and there are few who dare to plead for the 


380 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

prostitute. It is a bad way to reform men, or women, 
either, by denying them justice and sacrificing their 
liberty. Chastity is a good thing, and purity of life, but 
these things are not more holy than the right of all 
human beings to liberty and to justice; nor will you in 
the long run promote purity by trampling justice under 
foot. To make women the chattels of the administra¬ 
tion as is done in France, or whether it is a system of 
arbitrary arrest tempered by black mail as in Chicago, 
does not moralize the women, but it does demoralize the 
administration. * 

What then can be done? The first thing to decide 
is, what cannot be done. One thing is impossi¬ 
ble, and that is to yield for a single moment to that 
temptation of the devil which is ever whispered in the 
ears of the authorities when they are confronted with 
this question. Regulation in the European sense, apart 
from its hideous immorality and cynical violation of 
every principle of right is absolutely futile from the 
standpoint of health which is the plea usually put for¬ 
ward in its defense. A system against which the 
womanhood and the moral sense of the manhood of the 
world are in hot revolt is not likely to find much favor 
in the western world. Any system of official license 
and registration is virtually an authorization of vice by 
the state. It is as if the constituted authorities were to 
certify for the use of the citizens a number of women 
guaranteed healthy by the certificate of some state 


* It has been reserved for Mayor Weir of Lincoln, Nebraska, to take the lead in 
a repressive campaign directed not against the unfortunate women but against their 
customers. After taking every precaution that adequate accommodation was 
provided for all women on the town in public institutions if they wished to 
abandon their present life, he gave six weeks notice of his determination to root 
up the traffic in vice. On the 1st of March the name of every man found entering 
a house of ill fame or gambling house was noted by the police. They were 
instructed to take pains to obtain their real names, and the order significantly 
continued “it does not matter if the arrests occur every day or oftener.” The 
order was issued to break up and destroy this alleged business, and the mayor 
assured the police that he would support them to the last extremity in the per¬ 
formance of its duty. “I will under no circumstances,” says the Mayor, “concur 
in the custom of fining the woman alone, believing that all prostitutes male and 
female should be dealt with exactly alike.” The names of all men entering houses 
of ill fame will be publicly exposed at the police station for general inspection. All 
owners of property rented for immoral purposes will be prosecuted. 



Casting out Devils. 381 

surgeon. “This is the way, walk ye in it” would be 
written up over the broad and easy way which leads to 
the house of debauchery. The system or no system of 
irregular arbitrary license by black mail which prevails 
in Chicago at present with all its faults, is immeasurably 
better than any attempt to legalize or to give the imprim- 
ateur of the state or of the city to the practice of prosti¬ 
tution. This system in the garrison towns in England 
has been shattered by the uprising of all that was best 
in the English people. The agitation against it is hot 
and strong on all parts of the continent. To intro¬ 
duce the system of compulsory surgical examin¬ 
ation while it may secure the health of a faction 
it tends directly to increase the disease among the 
women who elude the register. In Paris where 
the system has been in existence the longest, the 
administration admits that for one woman who is 
licensed and periodically examined in a licensed house 
there are ten who ply their calling clandestinely. The 
only way of combatting venereal disease is to take it at 
the outset when it can be cured instead of allowing it to 
continue until it assumes a more aggravated form, when 
it is almost incurable and dangerously contagious. 
Hence from the hygienic point of view the great object 
is to tempt sufferers from this malady to seek medical 
assistance at the earliest possible moment. This is 
directly hindered by trying to subject these women to a 
periodical examination which they detest and which 
makes them the bondslave of the police doctors. 
Besides no system of regulation and examination 
can ever succeed when it is applied only to one sex. 
The immediate consequence of any system of state regu¬ 
lation or municipal authorization for houses of debauch¬ 
ery is to teach every citizen that vice is necessary and 
lawful and to encourage the delusion that freedom 
from disease is guaranteed to debauchees by the govern¬ 
ment. The law then becomes a schoolmaster to lead 
men to the brothel. 


382 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

In Cleveland, where Chief Director Pollner has on his 
own mandate, introduced a system of regular medical 
inspection and police registration, the girls trade upon 
the fact and assure hesitating men that they are all right 
because they have the official certificate at home. One 
of them, while I was there showed me a whole bundle 
of duly signed copies of the original certificates which 
have to be filed every week in the Director’s office. 
What then must be done? 

Common sense would suggest that the entrance to 
the profession should be narrowed and made as diffi¬ 
cult as possible, while the exit from it should be made 
broad, easy and accessible to all the unfortunate victims 
of the system. This is exactly the opposite to the 
course which at present prevails. 

Sexual incontinence is not a crime, and should not 
be treated as such. It is a sin which should be left to 
the moralist, and the Christian teacher. It only comes 
within the lash of the law when it becomes the source 
of disorder and public scandal, and actual crime. If 
this principle were recognized, many of the greatest dif¬ 
ficulties would disappear. An immoral woman who 
plies her vocation, so as to make no scandal and 
create no nuisance should no more be subjected to police 
surveillance, to say nothing of arrest, than the immoral 
man who takes pleasure in a dissolute life. The case is 
different when the woman converts herself into a peri¬ 
patetic nuisance, or makes the house a moral cesspool, 
so that it infects the neighborhood. I 11 that case she 
should be proceeded against as a nuisance and her neigh¬ 
bors should take prompt action against such a center of 
contagion being established in the midst of their 
young people. Even then the greatest care should 
be taken against arbitrary and vindictive measure 
in which justice is violated under the plea of pro¬ 
tection for morality. These people forget that it is a 
greater immorality to prostitute justice than to follow 
the calling of a prostitute. The girls for the most part 


Casting out Devils. 383 

are victims rather than the accomplices of the criminals 
and should not be interfered with. It is the keepers, 
and the landlords of such houses, who should be prose¬ 
cuted when prosecution is deemed advisable; and in 
every case when they are proved to be guilty they should 
be sent to jail and the house broken up. The present 
system of arbitrary pulling is simply a regulation system 
under the mask of arbitrary arrest. Those who make a 
traffic in vice by exploiting their fellow creatures, the 
procurers, the souteneurs and the “macs” are the worst 
parasites of the vicious system, and should be severely 
dealt with instead of being allowed, as at present, to 
escape scotfree. 

A lady who has devoted much time to the subject, and 
who has had practical experience in the work of reclaim¬ 
ing and rescuing the unfortunates, called upon me soon 
after my arrival in Chicago to urge upon me the impor¬ 
tance of more vigorous action in this matter. The 
Anchorage mission, an admirable institution established 
close to the sunken district of Fourth Avenue does a 
good and noble work. So does the Refuge for Fallen 
Women which is one of the most remarkable institu¬ 
tions of its kind in the country. But they are inade¬ 
quate. The Home of the Good Shepherd is another 
institution which is doing excellent work. But these 
three do not do more than touch the fringe of the ques¬ 
tion. My friend wrote me as follows- 

I wish to see established over the city a series of seven graded homes. 

1ST home. —For pure girls found in hospitals, depots, worn out 
clerks, etc., where if they desire they could be trained into service for 

this field. 

2nd home. —For those who come in after their first offence. There 
i 9 so much need of this, they have no refuge now. 

3rd home. —For those who have lived the life, either as kept 
women or madames, or those who have frequented houses of shame. 

4th. —A home for the workers, chapel school and work rooms of 
many kinds, type writing, music, drawing, painting, dress making, 
book keeping, or any other thing a woman can do credit to or develope 
a taste for Care being taken, no woman is where she does not fit, 
misapplied people cause much of the confusion in life to my thought. 

5TH.— Maternity home, Mothers living here with little ones, 


384 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

Children born here and cared for afterwards. Kindergarten, kitchen 
garten etc., etc. 

6th home. —For women addicted to drink. 

7th —A home where old sinners can come and die —with a Saviour 
—and hospital in which these women can help much and in making 
themselves useful, they will be more content. 

The women able to work should receive wages, kept for them in 
a bank of our own, as it were, and after a few years, strong in the 
physical and spiritual with a sum of money at their command, they 
could go out from us citizens, able, having been taught their trade, to 
build up a business of their own. Desirable, that this should be done 
in our city, than the one in which they have been living and known 
in sin. 

All that is needed to start this home at once is the money. God grant 
it may soon come. I am looking alone to Him for it, and I firmly 
believe it will be given, and you can see the benefit of having a pre¬ 
ventive home in connection with the others. No girl coming from 
the neighborhood would receive any stigma, no one knowing from 
which she came, it would be no disadvantage to the pure girl, as those 
homes would be perfectly distinct and what greater honor could be 
conferred on any woman, than to be educated for this field in the 
vineyard. 


When Mr. Carter Harrison ordered all the women 
to leave State street, and concentrate on Fourth 
Avenue and Clark street, he effectively destroyed the 
value of all decent property in the neighborhood. If 
such a policy is pursued in the future, the owners who 
have property in the condemned district should be com¬ 
pensated otherwise they are driven to the alternative of 
either closing their property or of entering the busi¬ 
ness of brothel keeping. The Japanese alone have 
carried this policy out to its full logical extent. There 
are prostitute quarters in Japanese cities which are the 
Fourth Avenues magnified. Should such a policy be 
adopted, it would be well to adopt it with our eyes open, 
giving due regard to the interests of the neighbors and 
with adequate security for the escape of the inmates. 
It is possible to establish such a quarter, brilliantly 
lighted and constantly patroled by police matrons, who 
would have power to suppress any house which would be 
proved to have debauched innocent girls, or to have 
admitted any inmates without first sending them to a 
good woman to dissuade them from the life into 


Casting out Devils. 385 

which they were entering. This could oe done. It would 
be better than the present system, which has the disad¬ 
vantage of establishing a prostitute quarter without the 
safeguards which might be secured where the Japanese 
system is logically carried out. For my own part I 
prefer the scattering system, but this is too large a sub¬ 
ject to discuss here. 

All these measures, however, are but palliatives, 
the real exorcism must be accomplished by raising 
the standard of morality until it will be regarded 
as shameful for a man to be unchaste as it is now 
for a woman, and in the promotion of everything 
which tends to give men and women more points 
of contact. Any advance that is made in the direc¬ 
tion of the emancipation of woman tends to reduce 
the physical relation to its proper subordinate position. 
Nor does this in any way imply the ignoring of the 
important part which that relation occupies in society. 
Unless civilization is a mistake, and Christianity a delu¬ 
sion, monogamy is the ideal towards which our race is 
tending. In the future, adultery and fornication will be 
regarded as almost as inconceivable as incest. Every 
step towards this tends to exalt the conjugal relation and 
at the same time to extend the possibilities of friendship 
between the sexes. 

Hitherto I have confined myself to discussing 
the exorcising of evil spirits which are vices rather 
than crimes. But the criminal demon must not 
escape attention, he is the superlative degree 
of human crookedness. To cast him out is 
the task which the police and magistrates have 
continually before them and there is no truce in that 
eternal warfare. But there are one or two things which 
might be done with advantage in Chicago. The first is 
to cease manufacturing criminals. That is much more 
practical and easier withal than to reclaim them after 
they are manufactured. Chicago manufactures her 
criminals in two ways: first, by the absence of any 


386 If Christ Came to Chicago . 

arrangement for dealing with incipient criminality in 
the child; secondly, in the lack of any adequate 
arrangements for reclaiming the idle tramp, or of pre¬ 
venting the gravitation into bumdom of the unem¬ 
ployed workingman, and thirdly, by the scandalous 
abuses which prevail in her police courts. 

An admirable little book written by my friend, Mr. 
Waugh, the Hon. Director of the Society for the Preven¬ 
tion of Cruelty to Children was published in England 
some fifteen or twenty years ago. It was entitled 
“The Jail Cradle, and Who Rocks it,” and con¬ 
stituted such a damning indictment against sending 
children to herd with criminals, that the practice of 
sending juvenile offenders to jail has almost ceased, with 
advantage to society and to the children themselves. 
New South Wales, and some of the Australian 
colonies have gone further than any other countries, 
in the protection of the juvenile offender from the influ¬ 
ence of other criminals. If New South Wales is at the 
head of the scale Chicago lies very near the bottom. 
Police magistrates, journalists and every other author¬ 
ity, have deplored the practice of accustoming children 
before they are in their teens with the police station 
and the cells in the Bridewell. There is very little rev¬ 
erence for children in Chicago. Messenger boys not 
more than fourteen years of age, go in and out of the 
police cells every hour of the night gaining an intimacy 
with the drunken and debased classes, which can hardly 
be said to tend towards edification. Mere lads of the 
same age, make a regular tour through the houses of 
ill-faine, selling newspapers on Fourth Avenue, nor is it 
thought that it is undesirable that such young children 
should be introduced so early to the abominations of a 
great city. As for the waifs and strays, if it were not for 
Mr. Daniels, the indefatigable superintendent of the 
mission of State street, I do not know what would be¬ 
come of them. This mission is one of the most admira¬ 
ble charities in the city; and it is housed in a way 


Casting out Devils. 387 

which would be a disgrace to a third rate country town. 
Mr. Daniels has set his heart upon the building on the 
Lake front, where there could be established a depart¬ 
ment dealing entirely with the juvenile offender so that 
he would be removed altogether from contact with elder 
criminals. His scheme, which is well thought out and 
carefully planned, would supply a court for all offenders 
whose youth would entitle them to special considera¬ 
tion, but he would use the greater part of the building 
as the headquarters of his busy boys. Mr. Daniels has 
made a business success of the Waifs Mission. He has 
taken the riff-raff of the streets and trained them in 
habits of industry and thrift, and made them earn their 
own living. This is done under every conceivable 
difficulty; wretched accommodation, lack of support, in 
fact, lack of everything except what is supplied by Mr. 
Daniel’s own indomitable will and loving heart. He is 
ready, if he is provided with adequate housing for his 
lads to ask for no further contribution. He would 
make the institution self-supporting and rid the town of 
the shame and disgrace of the manufacture of juvenile 
criminals. I sincerely hope that the philanthropy of 
Chicago will see that Mr. Daniel’s prayer does not go 
unanswered. 

Criminals are also manufactured by neglecting the 
tramp. If no adequate provision is made for relieving 
the necessities of the penniless and destitute, they will 
beg and be supported by the conscience of the commu¬ 
nity in doing so. But begging is only one shade better 
than stealing, and the habit of mendicancy leads natur¬ 
ally to actual thieving. 

There is no excuse for a city like Chicago in which 
the elementary necessities of sanitation and of street 
cleaning are so poorly attended to for refusing to pro¬ 
vide a labor test for the tramp. It is in the winter 
when the tramp plague is the most formidable in the 
towns and at that time there is work for 10,000 men on 
the streets and the allies of the city. There is work 


388 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

enough to be done, it is only a question as to whether 
the tramps will be allowed an opportunity of working at 
useful labor for their rations instead of prowling round 
the city, infesting every street and alley and rapidly 
degenerating into the semi-criminal condition of pro¬ 
fessional bum. 


CHAPTER IV. 

The brotherhood of labor. 

It was an old jug, and withal much worse for wear. 
It had lost its handle and its sides were seamed 
with many a flaw, but still it held the water and that 
sufficed. Nor did the speakers in the Trades and Eabor 
Assembly of Chicago, object to use its contents because 
of its forbidding and even repulsive exterior. For the 
battered old gallon jug stood on the table all worn and 
frayed with much pounding of the gavel, at which sits 
the chairman of the Parliament of Associated Labor in 
Chicago, and the water which it contains refreshes the 
unionist orators when they are dry and parched by their 
own fiery eloquence. For the water is there all the 
same and thirsty men are not particular about the 
jug. 

Which jug is a parable of the relations which ought 
to exist, but which at present do not, between the 
labor unions of America and the organized Christian 
churches of the continent. The labor unions look 
askance at the church as it exists and is organized 
today. If they do not say with the French Republi¬ 
canism, “Clericalisme—voila l’ennemi!” they say much 
the same thing—American style. They have got no use 
for the church, they say. It has no handle by which 
they can use it to help labor. It is seamed and flawed 
with numberless imperfections. So they will have 
nothing to do with it; and they don’t. Not five per 
cent of the members of labor unions in Chicago, I 
was assured on my first visit to the Trades and Labor 
Assembly, ever darken the doors of a place of worship. 
Such unionists as are churchmen are chiefly Catholic. 

The result is what might be expected. The labor 
unions are suffering from the lack of the support which 

389 


390 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

the church could give them, and the church is vaguely 
and painfully conscious that it is not ministering to those 
who need her most. And all because of the prejudice 
against the battered and ugly old jug which, never¬ 
theless, is the vessel that contains the water of life. 

By water of life I do not mean what many labor men 
think is religion, which is as they would put it, the 
mere obtaining of passports duly vised and counter¬ 
signed by certificated sky pilots for admission to the 
celestial regions after death. I mean the help which 
they need on earth to enable them to realize their ideals 
here and now. I mean the strength which would 
enable them to redress grievances, to elect just judges, 
to amend unjust constitutions and generally to deliver 
them from the bondage under which they are lab¬ 
oring. I mean the friendly sympathy that would, for 
instance, secure them places in which to meet and liberal 
support both in the moral backing and in the financial 
help of which they stand in sore need. And I mean 
more than any of these things, more than all of them put 
together, a reinforcement of the moral sentiment among 
the unionists themselves, a restoration of confidence of 
man in man which is almost eaten out by the all- 
pervading worship of smart money making, and as 
the result of this the discovery of leaders among 
their own ranks whom they would not hesitate to 
trust with uncounted gold. Unionists in Chicago 
and in America lack many things, but this above 
all. For they, like other men have forgotten 
God, and have learned to distrust men. There is as 
much envy, malice and all uncharitableness among 
them as among any other class in the community. 
They distrust each other, malign their leaders and are 
more singularly lacking in enthusiastic devotion to 
their chiefs than any body of men I have ever met. 

I do not for a moment believe what I hear on every 
side as to the universal dishonesty of everybody whose 
name I mention. But this readiness to hurl the reproach 


The Brotherhood of Labor. 391 

of dishonesty against every labor leader by the men who 
follow them shows that the rank and file is suffering 
from what might be expected from the divorce between 
labor and the church. The divorce has gone much 
further here than in the old country. In England most 
of the labor leaders even if they have quit church going 
bear the stamp of their early training in church and 
Sunday school. Some of them, notably those who more 
or less ostentatiously repudiate Christianity, are as 
stalwart as puritans in everything but the ordinances. 
And as a result English trades unionists and the labor 
movement in the old country has the advantage of half 
a dozen leaders, whose personal character is unimpeach¬ 
able and whose record is as stainless as that of the 
highest and noblest in the land. There may be many 
such men in America but they have not succeeded as 
yet in securing the same general recognition even among 
their own class, let alone in the community at large. 
That seems to me the greatest weakness of the labor 
movement in America. 

Distrust and lack of faith are due to lack of character 
on one side or the other. It is only the honest man who 
believes in the honesty of men. Those who are certain 
all men are thieves but see the reflection of their own 
inner soul in the mirror of their neighbor’s faces. But 
whatever the cause and wherever lies the secret of this 
lack of confidence, it is a fatal bar to any real progress. 
If in the heat of the fight you have to keep squinting 
over your shoulder to see that your officer is not pick¬ 
ing your pocket, you stand a very poor chance of 
victory. The labor movement suffers and will suffer 
more from these indirect consequences of the worship of 
the dollar among its own members than from the tyranny 
of Mammon in all its trusts and corporations. 

I never realized so clearly before the eternal truth of 
the saying that, “by faith ye are saved,” as when I was 
confronted with the consequences of the lack of faith. 
Not faith in formulas, but faith in the divine in man, 


392 


If Christ Came to Chicago. 

of so much at least of the divine in man as will lead 
him to keep his word, to stand to his guns, and to 
keep his hands from picking and stealing. That ele¬ 
mentary indispensable, irreducible quantum of faith 
seems to be more lacking in Chicago than in London. 
Faith has perished among the people and as a result 
they are handed over helpless and hopeless to be trod¬ 
den under foot by the strong. 

Long centuries of oppression during which all the 
resources of England were employed to foment distrust 
and destroy the confidence of the Irish in each other 
have produced their natural results in Ireland and 
here, where the Irish element is strong, the fatal herit¬ 
age brought across the seas has lost none of its evil 
power. But that would not be sufficient to account for 
this deep ingrained conviction that if you elect your most 
trusted comrade to office he will in a few months be as 
corrupt as the rest, that every man is more or less ‘ ‘on 
the make” and that the more you trust a man the more 
certain it is that he will sell you when he gets an oppor¬ 
tunity and that you will get left. No brotherhood of 
labor or of anything else is possible until this funda¬ 
mental lack of faith is replaced by that more generous 
confidence of man in man which is the basis of every 
good thing. 

“ Do your neighbor as he would do you—if he gets the 
chance,” the Chicago version of the Golden Rule is not 
working out well for the laboring man. In so far as he 
has substituted for this the older version he has suc¬ 
ceeded in bettering his condition. The Cigar Makers 
Union, for instance, which is one of the strongest in the 
country with a reserve fund of half a million in the 
bank has gone through these hard times without having 
to submit to wage reductions and that without having 
recourse to strikes. The Lumbershovers’ Union on a 
smaller scale has been, and is, very successful. Of 
course no amount of confidence in each other will enable 
men to keep up prices against a falling market, but it 


The Brotherhood oj Labor. 393 

minimizes the loss and enables them to tide over bad 
times. “A brother that is helped by a brother is like a 
strong city.” It may have its reverses but the strong 
city stands. 

The unions of Chicago have done good, noble service 
to the cause of labor this winter. They undertook at 
the outset to provide for the relief of all the unemployed 
of their own number and on the whole this promise has 
been honorably kept. There are 297 unions in Chicago 
with 100,000 members representing a population of 400,- 
000. Very few of these unionists have come upon the 
fund raised by public charity. The sum which the 
unions have distributed to their unemployed members, 
this winter in Chicago, probably exceeded all the money 
subscribed by the rest of the community for the relief of 
distress. Exact statistics are lacking but the facts speak 
for themselves. 

The more thoroughly organized unions, especially 
those connected with the building trade which have a 
separate council or federation of their own have suc¬ 
ceeded in securing the eight hours day without legis¬ 
lation and until the recent bad times they maintained 
a high standard of wages. Wages, however, have tum¬ 
bled in some cases very heavily and what is much worse 
to bear, the work itself is not to be had. The aristoc¬ 
racy of labor in Chicago is apt to imitate other aristoc¬ 
racies and having obtained its own comforts to leave its 
less fortunate brethren to get along as best they can. 
This lack of a realizing sense of human brotherhood, 
combined with the deep underlying conviction of almost 
all unionists that if any wider movement is promoted out¬ 
side their own immediate trade it is in order that some 
‘ ‘ skate’ ’ or boodler may get something out of it, para¬ 
lyzes the labor party in Chicago as elsewhere in America. 

The labor movement in America seems to me to be 
about where the English labor movements stood nearly 
thirty years since. The unions are still to a certain 
extent outlawed. They have no allies and many ene- 


394 tf Christ Came to Chicago. 

mies. They have no representatives in City Councils,* in 
state legislatures or in the Federal Congress. The news¬ 
papers, almost without exception, are against them. 
Among the churches they have some sympathy but lit¬ 
tle support. They are hampered, as we were not, by 
the fetters of written constitutions. 

These are the consequences to labor of the divorce 
between the unions and the churches. The results to 
the churches are not less disastrous. They have lost the 
confidence of the leaders of the labor movement. The 
local unions regard them with suspicion, and in some 
cases with positive dislike that is a barrier to doing any 
good work. A well known minister, in Chicago, told 
me a curious instance of how this operates. He is a 
doctor of divinity and he recently made a tour round 
the world. On his return he was asked by a member of a 
Milwaukee labor union to give them an illustrated lecture 
about his travels. The union approved of the invitation 
believing that he was a medical man. Before the lect¬ 
ure was delivered they discovered that he was a doctor 
not of medicine but of divinity. They immediately 
cancelled the invitation with only one dissensient and 
the lecture was declared off. To preach and teach in 
the face of such prejudice as this is somewhat difficult 
work. The result is that as the unionists don’t attend 
church while their employers do, the ministers naturally 
and inevitably tune their music to their audience, f 


* See Appendix F, “What London County Council has done for labor.’ 

t The Lutherans, of Oshkosh, honestly believe that labor unions are contrary 
to the law of God and in February all unionists were expelled from the south side 
Lutheran church in that town. Admission to membership was refused to the son 
of an officer in the church because he was a member of a labor union. The argu¬ 
ments used by the minister in question are somewhat archaic. “We Lutherans are 
against labor and trade unions, because their principles, endeavors and pro¬ 
ceedings are against God’s commandments. Their principles, endeavorings and 
proceedings are evidently against the order which God has put in the fourth com¬ 
mandment. In this commandment God has drawn the line of difference between 
the employer and the employed, parents and children, masters and servants. If 
the workman does not come to the employer with decent requests or desires, but 
with firm demands, taking the control of the business into his hand, he removes 
the bars which God has put between master and servant; in fact, he makes himself 
the master of the business. It is the duty of father and husband to care, for their 
families. If they do not do this, if they rather go on a strike, they sin against the 
word of God, neglecting the duties imposed upon them in the fourth and sixth com- 



The Brotherhood of Labor. 395 

The wealthy pew holder, the liberal supporter of 
church funds becomes as potent in the church as he is 
elsewhere, and so the breach is made worse. The net 
effect of it is that the church cannot fulfil her divine 
mission. 

All that I have done or tried to do in Chicago resulted 
from my conviction that no good worth speaking of will 
be done in Chicago or elsewhere which does not bring 
together again into a firm fighting alliance the forces of 
organized labor and the forces of organized Christi¬ 
anity. When on my first Sunday in Chicago I was asked to 
address the Trades and Labor Assembly, I was earnestly 
cautioned against saying a word about religion. ‘ ‘If you 
say anything about God or the church or religion they 
will hiss you off the platform. This crowd takes no 
stock in these things.” I listened and wondered. But 
when my turn came to speak I could not refrain from 
telling them that the first condition of social emancipa¬ 
tion was a hearty alliance between the church and labor. 
“You don’t take much stock in churches I am told,” 
and the audience assented heartily. “Don’t take stock in 
them,” I continued, “if you don’t believe in them, but it 
is fatuous folly on your part to refuse to use them for 
all they are worth to attain your own ends and to promote 
the regeneration of society.” The ice was broken. 
They didn’t hiss. “The boys stood it,” said a journalist 
who was present, and from that day I never lost an 
opportunity of pleading for the recognition of the need 
which each of these two great factors has of the other. 


mandments. It is the will of God; laid down in the seventh and ninth command¬ 
ments, ‘ That we may not craftily seek to get our neighbor’s money, goods, inheri¬ 
tance or house, nor obtain it by a show of right; ’ nor by oppresion or extortion. 
But this is done if the unions meet their employers with firm demands, threaten¬ 
ing with strikes and carrying out the same. It is well known how many a strike is 
the cause of sins against the fifth commandment. The eighth commandment is 
sinned against by calling nonunion men ‘scabs’ and abusing them in different 
ways. According to the tenth commandment we should urge our neighbor’s serv- 
ants ‘ to stay and do their duty.’ Union men on the contrary alienate the serv¬ 
ants from their employer by telling him whom he has to or whom he has not to 
employ. The members of this union have to pledge themselves not to divulge the 
proceedings of this union to any person not a member of the same. The Bible 
says: ‘ Woe unto them that seek deep to hide their counsel from the Lord, and 
their works are in the dark, and they say: Who seeth us and who knowetb us ? ’ ” 



396 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

“No practical solution of this question will ever be 
found without the assistance of religion and the church. ’ * 
That is the dictum of the Pope in his famous encyclical, 
and it has been and is the burden of all that I have said or 
what I have to say. Labor parched and thirsty will 
yet overcome its prejudice against the chipped old 
ungainly jug that contains the living water of helpful 
sympathy and effective support. It was the chasm be¬ 
tween the unions and the churches organized as Mr. 
Pomeroy told the Labor Federation by “the Great Master 
Mechanic, and his immortal twelve walking delegates, ’ ’ 
one that is impossible to bridge. There is every disposition 
on the part of the better men on both sides to join hands 
for helpful mutual service. The ministers of religion for 
the first time in the history of Chicago sent an influential 
deputation of their number to bid welcome to the 
American Federation of Labor when it held its annual 
meeting in the city last December, and the act was 
hailed on both sides as a harbinger of better days to 
come. Nor has labor on its part been indifferent. At 
the Central Music Hall conference in November the 
chair was taken by Mr. M. H. Madden, president of the 
Illinois Federation of Labor, who in an eloquent opening 
speech made an earnest appeal to the churches to clasp 
hands with labor and to do something for God and 
humanity. “We yearn,” he said, “for the co-operation 
in the work of doing good and alleviating suffering.” 

At Milwaukee, under the auspices of an energetic 
young Methodist minister a church and labor social 
union has been formed, which was inaugurated by an 
address by a well known labor leader who had not dark¬ 
ened the doors of a church for a quarter of a century 
until he came by invitation to occupy the pulpit and 
explain why the working classes were not within its pale. 
In Chicago the retail clerks union through their able 
and indefatigable representative, Mr. L. T. O’Brien, 
appealed to the Ministerial Federation for their assistance 
on. securing the passing of an ordinance giving the clerks 


The Brotherhood of Labor . 397 

in the stores the boon of Sunday closing. Nor were the 
ministers slow to respond. The ordinance was approved 
by the judiciary committee, and it is expected it will be 
passed by the council. 

One of the most remarkable of all the evidences of the 
altered spirit of the labor men has been afforded by the 
formation of a church in the identical building where 
four months ago I was told I should be hooted off the 
platform if I so much as mentioned religion. “The Mod¬ 
ern Church” was founded by Mr. Pomeroy, Mr. 
O’ Brien and other leading labor unionists on modern 
principles in response to a challenge thrown out by Dr. 
Harper of the University of Chicago at a social gather¬ 
ing of Congregationalists, where a labor leader had 
severely denounced the church for her indifference to 
the interests of labor. “ Why not organize a church 
of your own?” said Dr. Harper. “So we will” 
responded the labor men, and “The Modern Church” was 
the result. 

It met for the first time, on Sunday afternoon, Feb¬ 
ruary 11, in the Bricklayer’s Hall, which is occupied 
by the Trades and Labor Assembly on alternate Sundays. 
The church therefore meets once a fortnight. Its salient 
features as defined by its founders are ‘ ‘ free seats, no 
collection, no dogma.” 

It is the intention of the committees in charge to have a different 
preacher each time and to see that every creed has its representative. 
In course of time they hope this will cause the labor people to think 
differently of preachers, and preachers to change their opinion of the 
labor people. 

As yet “the Modern Church” has not progressed so 
far as to build itself a local habitation and is perforce 
content to accept the hospitality of the Temple of Labor. 
But if it makes headway it intends to have its own 
building.* 


♦ The following extract from the programme of the founders will be read with 
interest: The most radical departures from established church construction are to 
be observed in the plan proposed for the home ofthe '* Modern Church.” It will 
be not only a place of worship but a pleasant lounging place where the members 
may find any recreation they desire. It will be an educational institution, and 



398 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

The church was opened by the Rev. J. 1,1 oyd Jones, 
the Unitarian who defined it as a church whose corner¬ 
stone was sympathy, and declared that its object was to 
make here in Chicago a new Holy Land. The second 
meeting, held February 25, was devoted to a discussion 
between Mr. Pomeroy on the one hand and the Rev. 
Mr. Burch on the other as to the relation between 
the church and labor. The hall was crowded by an 
attentive audience which remained for two and a half 
hours following the debate with the deepest interest. 
Both agreed that the time had come for more hearty 
co-operation between the two, but they differed as to 
who was to blame. Both speakers were capable and 
earnest but the most eloquent passage in the speeches 
was that in which Mr. Pomeroy in his impeachment of 
the organized church referred to the character of Jesus. 
He said: 

I am pleased to have my friend know that the labor people have 
cheered the name of Christ, that carpenter of Judea, the sweet pathos 
of whose life has softened the stone in the bosoms of men, whose 
teachings have made the world better beyond measure; Christ, whose 
fraternity was as broad as eternity, and as immeasurable as is space, 
whose mission among men was to teach them brotherly love; Christ, 
whose name is the synonym of fellowship, whose lessons were love, 
whose words were love, whose every act was fathered by His mighty 
love and pity for the poor, the weak, the persecuted and the helpless 
—love for every man, woman, child and beast of the field. Christ, 
the halo of whose glory makes the sunshine dim, the magic of whose 
name calls the evil hand to halt; Christ, whose church was the 
world, whose pulpit was the breasts of men; Christ whose religion was 
humanity. No wonder the sons and daughters of toil cheer His name. 
Nor can you separate Christ and His church. His church, I say; for His 
church is within the inner temples of the pulsating hearts of the peo¬ 
ple of the world, and in listening to His sermons they forget those of 
the “salaried soothsayer.” 


from the pulpit rostrum university extension lectures will be given, debates on 
every topic of any interest whatsoever will be held, and musical and other enter¬ 
tainments given. The central idea in the club-house arrangement will be 
to keep men away from saloons and other bad resorts. In furthering this object 
the basement will be given up to a set of baths, a bowling alley and a fine gymna¬ 
sium. On the ground flour will be a large amusement hall, billiard and pool 
tables, checkers, dominos and other games, and stands for the sale of cigars, light 
temperance drinks, and lunches. A library will be installed in one corner. This 
floor will be a general lounging place where men may read, smoke, or enjoy them¬ 
selves as they see fit. On the floor above will be the auditorium proper, church, 
lecture hall and theatre combined. 



399 


The Brotherhood of Labor . 

It was in full accordance with the spirit of this decla¬ 
ration that Mr. Pomeroy concluded his speech by an 
impassioned appeal to the churches to produce a new 
Peter the Hermit who would preach a new crusade 
for the redemption not of the holy sepulchre but of the 
desecrated temple of humanity. “Peter,” said Mr. 
Pomeroy “ must come from the churches. We want their 
help and they will not follow Peter of our raising.” A 
notable declaration from one who in this same speech 
eulogized Tom Paine’s writings as the only revelation 
accepted by the American workman. 

Mr. Pomeroy is a Kentuckian, of some education and 
wide reading with a natural genius and magnetic power 
which stood in small need of book training. He is in many 
respects the most remarkable personality in the camp 
of labor at Chicago. His address of welcome to the 
Federation of Labor was unique. His position—idol¬ 
ized by some, detested by others, and distrusted by most 
—is exceptional. It might be made commanding. All 
that he needs to attain to any position for good to 
which he might care to aspire is the command of the 
confidence of his fellows. On the day when Mr. Pome¬ 
roy is trusted in America as John Burns, for example, is 
trusted in England, the labor men will not need to 
look further for their leader. 

There is ample need tor the advent of a Peter the 
Hermit if the social crisis in America is not to cul¬ 
minate in bloodshed. The working people without 
allies have given no hostages to fortune and have no 
visible reason for refraining from violence. It is true 
that violence will injure them in the long run. far more 
than it can help them, but like all men who suffer 
and who are weak they think more of the immediate 
winning of a strike by knocking a few ‘ ‘scabs” on the 
head than of the permanent loss which such violence 
inflicts upon their cause. The fact that large numbers of 
labor men are at this moment in what in England 
we call the Broadhead stage of development, Broad- 


400 If Christ Came to Chicago . 

head being the secretary of the Sheffield cutlers union, 
who use to hire men to kill and maim scabs or black¬ 
legs, simply proves that they are more or less outlawed. 

If they were within the pale, if they had churches 
to back them, and newspapers to plead for them, and 
courts to do them justice and their own trusted represent¬ 
atives on the bench and in Congress to see fair play, they 
would have long ere this emerged from the stage of 
incipient Thuggee in which many of them dwell. As 
they have no church to help them they clutch the 
revolver, and in default of an impartial judge to appeal 
to on the bench, they fetch the “scab” a clout over the 
head with a sandbag or a club. Every time they do this 
they supply Mr. Carnegie and others with plausible justi¬ 
fication for the use of Pinkertons and of Gatling guns, 
and public opinion even among those who are most 
sympathetic is driven over to reinforce the enemies of 
labor. 

What American labor needs is (i) a definite prac¬ 
tical programme—not a wild cat scheme for inau¬ 
gurating the millenium by passing a resolution and 
appointing a committee, (2) honest and capable leaders, 
and (3) a policy of making allies with all who will help 
labor to elect to city councils, to state legislatures, the 
bench and congress honest men first and foremost. 
Infinitely better in the interest of labor itself to send 
an honest capitalist to congress or to Springfield rather 
than a dishonest laborer who is simply in the market 
for the dishonest capitalist who prefers to buy his legis¬ 
lators ready made. Honesty is a jewel of price. With¬ 
out honesty political life is simply a den of thieves in 
which justice and right are sold at auction to the highest 
bidder. 

The policy of electing labor men to office is excellent, 
if labor men can be found to subscribe to pay their 
representatives. Here it is that the universal distrust, 
bred from want of confidence in character and the loss of 
faith in the very possibility of disinterested service, 


401 


The Brotherhood of Labor. 

hamstrings the labor movement. Until labor men learn 
to trust each other, and are worthy of trust, their cause 
is under a curse and can never prosper. It can only 
writhe like a wounded snake occasionally inflicting 
injury upon its enemies but never doing any real perma¬ 
nent good for itself. 

The alliance with the churches can best be secured by 
appealing to their help for definite practical reforms. 
Take for instance the question of the emancipation of 
labor from the seven days a week. On this point the 
churches ought surely to be solid with the unions. In 
a kind of a way they are. But even here in Chicago, 
they are still half asleep on this subject. Instead of 
eagerly volunteering to help the clerks in their crusade 
against the open Sunday store, they have for the most 
part needed to be coaxed and entreated and worried into 
action. A still more promising field is now opening- 
before them. The attack upon the statutory limitation 
of child labor under the guise of a technical question of 
its constitutional legality ought to bring the churches 
into line with the unions not merely on this question, 
but on the broader question of constitutional revision. 

Mr. Pomeroy has directly challenged the ministers to 
take issue on this question. He said: 

Is the church the protector of women and children? Let us see. 
A society of wealthy manufacturers has recently been formed to pur¬ 
chase a verdict from the state supreme court declaring that most just 
law unconstitutional. They have retained the strongest legal firm in 
the state to handle their case. Here the lines of contest are plainly 
drawn. On the one side wealth and legal craft, seeking the re-en¬ 
slavement of women and children. On the other the labor organ¬ 
izations saying “hold your hand! with all you* money, all your 
lawyers, with all the past record of that supreme court against us, we 
say hold!” Where is the church in this controversy? How many 
sermons have been hurled from the pulpit against this threatened 
infamy, this huckstering of childhood, this immolation of feeble 
women on the altar of greed? “By their works shall ye know them.” 
Who are the members of this soulless manufacturers’ association? 
Prominent pillars of the church—men whose consciences are as hard 
as their marrow bones are soft I charge the church as being tacitly 
guilty of complicity in this premeditated crime. The church has 
guilty knowledge of this most damnable scheme, and forgets to call 
down damnation upon the heads of the men who conceived it. 


402 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

What has the church to say to this? And what has 
the church to say to the demand that will assuredly fol¬ 
low a ruling by the court that the law is unconstitu¬ 
tional for a revision of the constitution? Legislative 
restrictions which even the most reactionary, hard 
hearted capitalist in England admits to be indispensable 
for the protection of labor are unconstitutional accord¬ 
ing to the State of Illinois. That constitution makes 
a fetish of freedom of contract and immolates before 
this idol victims whom British law would have long since 
rescued. The lawyer of the Manufacturers Association 
in explaining why he regards the Factory Act as unlaw¬ 
ful said: 

It denies to both employer and employee freedom of contract. 
The Supreme Court of this state has held somewhat similar legisla¬ 
tion unconstitutional. It declared the truck law illegal, also the 
mining statute, which provided that miners should be paid by actual 
weight, equally invalid. 

The simple fact of the matter is that from the point 
of view of the working man and the working woman if 
the State of Illinois could be suddenly placed under the 
Acts of Parliament passed by the British legislature they 
would attain at one stroke almost all the reforms for 
which they are now clamoring in vain. 

The need of an indissoluble union between labor and 
the church which was proclaimed as the great need of 
the age by the present pope will if recognized and 
worked out practically, offer the best chance of securing 
the reunion and the revivification of American Christi¬ 
anity. There is only one saving faith, says Prof. Briggs, 
but “nowhere in the world is the Christian Church so 
torn to pieces by denominationalism as in America.” If 
there is to be a Universal Church it will have to be 
based on the ministry of service, and the more practical 
that service the more insignificant will seem all speculat¬ 
ive points of theological difference. The natural result of 
this new departure will be a breaking down of the bar¬ 
riers which sectarian theology has built up between 
Christians of different rites and creeds. When you are 


The Brotherhood of Labor. 403 

concerned solely upon hoisting an invisible soul into an 
impalpable heaven, you may without sense of shame or 
of guilt refuse the co-operation of all who do not see eye 
to eye with you about the Immaculate Conception or the 
Procession of the Holy Spirit. But when it comes to be 
a question of hauling a half-drowned donkey out of a 
mudhole in which he is in danger of suffocating, there 
is not a bigot in any of the churches but would feel con¬ 
demned before God and man if he let that donkey drown 
rather than take his place at the windlass side by side 
with a heretic and a schismatic. And the more the 
church sticks to the outward and visible works of charity 
and philanthropy, the more anti-Christian will seem to 
be the spirit of exclusion and excommunication which 
destroys Christian power. 

The church cannot do better service to labor than by 
helping labor to help itself. The time is perhaps com¬ 
ing when under the inspiration of religious enthu- 
siam, we may see the problem of the unemployed solved 
by the establishment of a great Brotherhood of Labor, 
which would utilize in co-operative industry at ration 
rates, the unemployed labor of the nation. There is 
plenty of work to be done and plenty of workers, only too 
anxious to do it. Who shall bring those together whose 
separation spells starvation? Anything can be done 
if you can get men to trust each other. Nothing if 
trust is absent. The organization of labor camps for 
the unemployed, where a workless worker could pawn 
his future earnings in return for rations and shelter, 
might be carried out by such a brotherhood if men were 
honest. There is money in that scheme of a labor pawn¬ 
broker which will be realized by somebody some day—as 
Mr. Farnsworth has been endeavoring in vain to point out 
all this winter—and it would be well that its profits 
should accrue to associated labor. In like manner the 
issue of local inconvertible paper currency in the shape 
of labor certificates against material work into which the 
labor has been put which is advocated by Mr. DeBar- 


404 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

nardi in his “Trials and Triumph of Labor,” might be 
carried out with advantage, if men but trusted each 
other as brothers should. 

Faith not only can move mountains. It can earn dol¬ 
lars. Without it even the securing of the dollar seems to 
be becoming more and more difficult. 

If we had but a more real faith we should have more 
practical religion. Chicago has been somewhat inter¬ 
ested by a series of discourses in which Dr. Harper, 
president of the University, has been expounding week 
by week the generally accepted theories as to the more 
or less poetical or mythical nature of the narrative in 
the first chapter of Genesis. Hence much perturbation 
among many good souls inside the church, and a more 
or less languid curiosity on the part of those who are 
without to see whether anything will happen. The 
alarm is quite unnecessary, and the public interest 
might well be devoted to something more practi¬ 
cal. The real religious issue before the city is not 
whether Cain killed Abel, but whether rascals compared 
with whom Cain was a gentleman, are to be allowed to 
continue to sit as aldermen in the City Council. 

Either the whole gist of the teaching of the Old Tes¬ 
tament Scriptures was misleading, or the silence of pul¬ 
pit upon the moral and social issues of the election is a 
practical negation of the church’s belief in the inspira¬ 
tion of the sacred books, infinitely more serious than 
the speculations of the scholars as to the conflicting 
theories of their dates and origins. It does not mat¬ 
ter much to John Jones in the Rookery whether a 
real Cain did or did not kill a real Abel. It 
does matter a very great deal to John Jones whether the 
condemnation pronounced upon the man who asked, 
“Am I my brother’s keeper?” expressed the inner 
thought of the Eternal Lawgiver. Ministers and 
priests who at this juncture drone away with their 
homilies and their platitudes, without one vital¬ 
izing word of inspiration and of guidance to their 


The Brotherhood of Labor. 405 

flocks, may not be bad men. They are simply blind. 

“Humanity,” said Heine, “yearns after more solid 
food than the symbolic blood and flesh of the Eucharist. 
Humanity smiles compassionately at the ideals of its 
youth, that have failed in realization in spite of all its 
painful attempts, and it grows manfully practical. 
Humanity in our day worships a system of earthly 
utility; it has serious thoughts about establishing itself 
in citizen prosperity, about a reasonably ordered house¬ 
hold, about securing comfort for its old age.” 

What a change has come over the whole aspect of 
Christendom since the century begun! The modern 
spirit—of which Heine was the exponent—which was 
then in fierce feud with the church, has ended by 
triumphing over its old adversary, and changing the 
standpoint from which it contemplates the affairs of men. 
This life is no longer merely the ante-chamber of eter¬ 
nity. We are no longer mere pilgrims through a wilder¬ 
ness to a heavenly city, which rises on the other side of 
the waters of the river of death. We have become, on 
the contrary, citizens of the kingdom of God on earth, 
charged with the duty of transforming the world and 
regenerating human society. ‘ ‘Thy kingdom come, thy 
will be done on earth as it is in heaven. ’ ’ The human 
spirit,which in the early ages, affrighted by the bestiality 
and cruelties of Imperial Rome, could find no resting 
place, even for its imagination, on this side the grave, 
now sees the waters subside, the tops of the mount¬ 
ains appear, and the dove already bears the olive branch 
to the window of our social ark. 























♦ 
























% 















CHAPTER V. 

WHO IS MY NEIGHBOR? 

One afternoon in February an unknown visitor 
announced himself at the Commerce Club. On going 
out to see who he might be I came upon a little Irish¬ 
man who introduced himself as one who was a man 
about fifty and lived in Custom House place. “ I am all 
alone in the world,” he said, 'am getting on in years, 
and I should like very much to make the acquaintance 
of some people, especially of some good women, who 
are in a somewhat better social position than myself. I 
have neither man nor woman friend to whom I can tell 
my troubles or with whom I can have any conversation. 
The only people with whom I can speak are those in my 
own rank in life. They shift and move about and can¬ 
not help me if I get into trouble, and I feel as if it would 
be a good thing to be able to go, now and then at least, 
and have a friendly talk with somebody who would take 
an interest in me. So, ’ ’ he said, 1 ‘ I have called upon you. 
Do you think you could help me? You see,” he said 
plaintively, “I don’t see why I should be condemned for 
wishing to know people who are higher up in the world 
than myself. I noticed the other day that Chauncy M. 
Depew has been over to Europe and has been received 
by the Pope. Now, Mr. Depew is as much below the 
Pope as I am below Mr. Depew, yet if I should go and 
call upon Mr. Depew I should be treated as a tramp and 
should never be allowed to get a word with him. It is a 
little lonely for a workman who has got along in years, 
and I often think if I could only tell my troubles now 
and then to a good friend I should feel like another 
man. I should feel twice as much energy as I have. I 
am so lonely all alone in Custom House place.” 

The plaintive little Irishman set me thinking. How 

407 


4oS Ij Christ Came to Chicago . 

many must there be in every great city who are more 
or less inarticulately echoing the complaint of this for¬ 
lorn and lonely carpenter. They are alone in the world 
—alone in a great city. They have all the aspirations 
of a human being to be in healthy sympathetic relations 
with the rest of their kind. Educated men and refined 
and sympathetic women, in so far as they are educated 
and refined, represent a capacity for human intercourse 
which the uneducated and inarticulate can hardly be 
said to possess. What that carpenter wanted was not 
money. He indignantly disclaimed any desire for money 
for which he, indeed, stood in no need. It was not 
charity that can be expressed in dollars, but the much 
rarer and more valuable charity of friendship and sym¬ 
pathy that he craved. 

It is a sad enough thing to contemplate the number 
of the destitute of this world’s goods; after all it is not 
so sad as to see that other host of the lonely and for¬ 
lorn. Persons who seem to be orphaned of the uni¬ 
verse and who never go to sleep without feeling some¬ 
what of the bitterness of the third Richard’s anguished 
cry, “ There is no creature loves me, and if I die no one 
will pity me.” It was said of old time that the Lord 
setteth the desolate in families, but our modern civiliza¬ 
tion masses them together not in families but in blocks, in 
hordes regimented only for industrial work. That pro¬ 
cess is the reverse of divine. Every human being, man 
or woman, in so far as they are human and not animals, 
have tendrils of the heart which are perpetually yearn¬ 
ing to clasp and to cling to their fellow-creatures. Some¬ 
times cruel disappointments early in life, or bitter periods 
in later years, sear these tendrils as with hot iron, and 
the man or woman, instead of being a living vine, full 
of the grace of life, and of the tender and delicate sym¬ 
pathies and associations which blossom so freely in the 
heydey of youth, becomes but dry and withered stick. 
Useful, perhaps, but living no more. 

If Christ came to Chicago it seems to me that there are 


Who is My Neighborf 409 

few objects that would more command his sympathy 
and secure his help than efforts to restore the sense of 
brotherhood to man and to reconstitute the human 
family on a basis adjusted to modern life. 

In the doing of this work the Christian Churches are 
doing a good deal. Not so much as they might do and 
will do when once they have grasped the social obliga¬ 
tions of the Christian faith. But they are probably 
doing more than any other institution that can be 
named. The Young Men’s Christian Association, the 
Young Women’s Christian Association, the Christian 
Endeavor Societies, the Epworth League, the King’s 
Daughters and other associations are all efforts in the 
right direction. And after a time it is to be hoped that 
they will make practical efforts to see how far it is pos¬ 
sible for them to secure the advantage of federated 
co-operation without losing the strength which comes 
from a firm, narrow foothold upon a single principle. 
The time is surely coming, however, when something 
more must be done to knit together the caste and class 
severed units of the city’s population into a homogene¬ 
ous whole, in which the strong should bear the burdens 
of the weak and where the rich and poor could meet 
together as a first step towards recognizing that the 
Lord is the maker of them all. The lesson of the In¬ 
carnation needs to be taken into the hearts and worked 
into the lives of all of us. That is to say, the Word 
must be made flesh, and if your fellow-man is to be 
helped he can best be helped by making him your 
neighbor. You have got to come unto him to lift him 
up, and it is vain to think that the great, submerged, 
toiling multitude can be substantially assisted to a 
higher and more human life if their higher and more 
humane fellows remove themselves apart. When Christ 
came to save the world He did not do it from some con¬ 
tiguous star from which messages of love and mercy 
could be securely conveyed by some missionary angels 
to a miserable, sin-smarting world. He did just the op- 


4io If Christ Came to Chicago. 

posite. He came right down and lived as a man among 
men; among the artisans of Nazareth, with the fisher¬ 
men of Galilee, and then finished His course without a 
place to lay his head among the homeless wanderers of 
Judea. As He did then, would He not do now if He came 
to Chicago? That is to say, if His object was to redeem 
the least of these, His brethren, who live in Halsted 
street and in Little Hell or down the levee, He would 
take up his quarters where His brethren and sisters 
could be within talking range, and where He could see 
them from day to day, hear their troubles, heal their 
sicknesses and minister to them from the store of His 
divine compassion. 

If so, then Miss Addams was right in going to Hull 
House, where, with her friends she for some five years has 
been endeavoring to help the people by the redeeming 
grace of good neighborliness. Hull House is one of 
the best institutions in Chicago. Not merely because 
of the humanitarian influences which it radiates around 
the district in which it stands, but because it will be¬ 
come a training ground and nursery for multitudes of 
similar institutions speedily to spring up in all the 
great cities of America. What the monastery of St. 
Bernard was to the Cistertians, what the original Brother¬ 
hood of St. Francis was to the Franciscan order, so 
Hull House will be to the brotherhoods and sisterhoods 
or helpers and neighbors, who in increasing numbers 
will take up their residence in the midst of the crowded 
and desolate quarters of our over-crowded cities. Only 
by this means can we hope to reconstruct the human 
family, and restore something approaching to a micro¬ 
cosm of a healthy organization in every precinct of the 
city. Mere propinquity counts for a great deal in 
human affairs. The healthy natural community is that 
of a small country town or village in which every one 
knows his neighbor, an.d where all the necessary 
ingredients for a happy, intelligent and public-spirited 
municipal life exist in due proportion. Within a single 


Who is My Neighbor f 411 

square mile you will find ministers of religion, the 
lawyer, the doctor, the laborer and the business man all 
within stone’s throw of the blacksmith and the carpenter. 
Such a community constitutes a unit of which each 
human life forms a part where public opinion is power¬ 
ful, and where the influence of the best members can 
be immediately brought to bear upon the worst. But 
there are square miles in Chicago from which the cultured 
and the wealthy and the well to do flee as if from the 
plague. Whole quarters are left to be crowded with the 
poor and the ignorant who become sodden together in 
houses where the only civilizing light is the bull’s eye 
of the policeman’s lantern. My chief hope for our 
great cities is that the increasing number of intelligent, 
warm-hearted people will establish neighborly friend¬ 
ship with the crowded precincts which at present are 
almost as unknown to them as the territory of Tim- 
buctoo. If in every one of the eight hundred odd pre¬ 
cincts into which Chicago is divided, there were but one 
educated man or woman who had leisure to devote, say 
one hour a day to making friends with the people of that 
precinct, a great step would be taken towards civil¬ 
izing the city. Each of the eight hundred helpers 
would be like a living filament linking on the precinct 
in which he or she spent an hour a day with the wealth¬ 
ier and more favored circle in which the other twenty- 
three hours of their daily life was spent. Hull House 
is one of the best illustrations of what can be done by 
intelligent and sustained effort in this direction. The 
pioneer of this system of settlement was probably 
Toynbee Hall in the East of London, but Toynbee 
Hall is a very much less humane institution, and by no 
means so beneficent in its multifarious activities. The 
University settlement in Bethnal Green is on a much 
larger scale than Hull House, but it is much more of a 
polytechnic or democratic people’s palace, than a settle¬ 
ment in the strict sense of the word. Mansfield Hall, 
founded by the Congregationalists in London, is more 


412 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

on the lines of Hull House. There are similar institu¬ 
tions in both New York and Boston, but of all those 
that I have seen in the old country Hull House seems to 
me best because it is most helpful. This, perhaps, is 
due to the fact that a woman, with a woman’s instinct 
of natural motherliness is at the head of Hull House, 
whereas the other institutions are all more or less under 
the supervision of men. Whatever is the cause, Miss 
Addams and her associates have good reason to thank 
God, and take courage when they contemplate the work 
they have done in the last five years, and the prospect 
now opening before them of a still wider field of use¬ 
fulness. For they have realized the ideal settlement of 
which many have dreamed, but which they alone have 
brought into life. Hull House has avoided the Scylla 
of denominational narrowness, and at the same time has 
not less dexterously steered passed the Charybdis of the 
luke-warmness and apathetic indifference which are the 
bane of much undenominational effort. A High Church 
movement or a Catholic sisterhood or a branch of the Sal¬ 
vation Army may generate more enthusiasm, but they in¬ 
sist upon confining it to the straight and narrow channels 
of their conception of orthodoxy. On the other hand in¬ 
stitutions which are maintained by those who are L,aoda- 
cean in matters of theology, are too often very tepid 
in their humanitarianism. Very broad people are very 
seldom as earnest as they are broad. Human enthusiasm 
seems to be like a volume of water in a river, if you con¬ 
fine it to a mill race, it is powerful enough to work the 
most powerful machinery, but if you spread it out over 
a wide, shallow bed, it has not sufficient force to drive 
a single wheel. Hull House has been enthusiastic 
without being intolerant, and broad without losing the 
fervour of its humanitarian zeal. Therein Miss Addams 
has done good work. She has been the subject of 
considerable criticism, not to say denunciation, among 
the stricter devotees of cast iron creeds, but she has 
bravely stuck to her guns, and vindicated her position, 


Who is My Neighbor? 413 

not by arguments,, but by quietly and constantly 
endeavoring to live the life and do the deeds of 
Christ. What is wanted is a multiplication 

of Hull Houses all over the city. Some, of 
course, will be founded by denominationalists and 
sectarians on denominational and sectarian lines, and 
of all of them I can only say that every one must wish 
them God speed in the name of the Lord. It is a thou¬ 
sand times better that Christ should be preached in this 
practical way, even if He preached of envyings and 
strife. But these dogmatic partition walls are wearing 
very thin, and justice and righteousness, and the 
weightier matters of the law, which, being interpreted, 
mean honesty, cleanliness, and brotherly kindness are 
becoming more and more recognized as of infinitely 
greater importance than the tithe of ecclesiastical mint 
and anise and cumin, to which the scribes and pharisees 
in every age attach such exaggerated importance. In 
southern Chicago, in the neighborhood of the stock yards, 
a new settlement has been founded in the last month 
or two, in connection with the University, with the co¬ 
operation of a company of kindergartners, who are 
entering upon their residential movement in the best 
spirits, with practical heads and kindly hearts. The 
only fault about Hull House is that it has been too 
successful, and has increased and extended to such an 
extent, that solitary individuals who might be disposed 
to attempt something of a residential helpership, may 
shrink back aghast at the thought of having to found an 
institution with all the adjuncts and paraphernalia which 
have sprung into existence around Miss Addams’ origi¬ 
nal venture. Let them not be afraid. If they can do 
but one thing let them do that, and do not shrink from 
doing the duty of today from any fear that your strength 
may not be equal to the duty of tomorrow. In this 
matter I am disposed to look most of all to individual 
effort, but a great impetus would be given to this work if 
the churches in various districts could practically combine 


414 U Christ Came to Chicago. 

to found a residential settlement in 4 the most neglected pre¬ 
cincts. There is great advantage in a union of churches, 
because when half a dozen churches have to work to¬ 
gether, the necessity for co-operation prevents any undue 
insistence upon the sectarianism of any one of the asso¬ 
ciated churches. Once let us get the people thoroughly 
well satisfied that we have not even begun to enable the 
masses to realize Christ until we have got one Christlike 
man or one Christlike woman living within five minutes’ 
walk of his door step, and a great deal of the light of the 
life of God will penetrate into the heart of darkest 
Chicago. 

Yielding to many and pressing applications from those 
who have sought information about Hull House, Miss 
Addams has at last been good enough to publish a brief 
statement or outline sketch of the work which is be¬ 
ing done at that social settlement. Hull House has en¬ 
tered upon the fifth year of its existence with a residential 
membership of eighteen, thirteen of whom have been in 
residence longer than six months. The settlement be¬ 
gan with two ladies, who believed that “social inter¬ 
course could best express the growing sense of the econ¬ 
omic unity of society.” They simply went to Hull 
House, 335 South Halsted Street, and lived there in the 
Nineteenth Ward, which returns Alderman Pow¬ 
ers to the Council. Miss Addams was attracted to it by 
the fact that it was so forlorn and desolate. She says : 

In a ward where there is no initiative among the citizens the idea 
underlying our self-government breaks down. The streets are inex¬ 
pressibly dirty, the number of schools inadequate, factory legislation 
unenforced, the street lighting bad, the paving miserable and alto¬ 
gether lacking in the alleys and smaller streets, and the stables defy 
all laws of sanitation. Hundreds of houses are unconnected with the 
street’s sewer. There are seven churches and two missions in the 
ward; all of these are small and somewhat struggling save the large 
Catholic church on the west boundary. Out of these nine religious 
centers there are but three in which the service is habitually con¬ 
ducted in English. 

It was her conviction that this ward and similar God¬ 
forsaken regions could not be saved by mere political 


Who is My Neighbor ? 415 

activity. They could only be saved by applied Christian¬ 
ity working out into the social sphere. But who was to 
apply this Christianity? Miss Addams believed that 
among the mass of unemployed people of culture 
there was a reserve battalion of the Lord of Hosts which 
might be brought into the field. She says: 

We have in America a fast-growing number of cultivated young 
people who have no recognized outlet for their active faculties. The 
impulse to share the lives of the poor and desire to make social service, 
irrespective of propaganda, express the spirit of Christ, is as old as 
Christianity itself. That Christianity has to be revealed and embod¬ 
ied in the line of social progress is a corollary to the simple proposi¬ 
tion that man’s action is found in his social relationships in the way in 
which he connects with his fellows; that his motives for action are the 
zeal and affection with which he regards his fellows. 


When she settled in Hull House she did not know 
exactly what line of development experience would 
suggest. She was content to wait and see how things 
framed themselves. She began by living among the 
people, visiting them and asking her neighbors to 
call as friends and guests. They responded to her invi¬ 
tation so willingly that Hull House has 2,000 visitors 
a week. These guests of hers formed the first class of 
what is now a regular system of College Extension 
courses with 250 enrolled members, with twenty-five 
teachers, mostly college-bred men and women, some of 
whom have taught continuously for three years, and all 
of whom give their services free. The only charge 
made is fifty cents per student to cover cost of prospec¬ 
tuses, etc. Here is a week’s diary of these classes and 
reading parties: 


Day. Hour. Subject. 

Mon. 4. Pedagogics, or how 
to teach Science. 

7. Latin, Elementary. 

7. Drawing. 

7.30, Gymnastics 

(women). 

8. Latin Reading. 

8. History of Art (Early 
Italian). 


Day. Hour. Subject. 

Tues. 5. Reading in English 
Literature. 

7. Arithmetic. 

7. Emerson. 

7.30, Gymnastics 
(women). 

7.30, English and Letter 
Writing. 

7.30, Cooking. 


4i6 If Christ Came to Chicago. 


Day. Hour. Subject. 

Day. 

Hour. Subject. 

Tues. 

8. English Poetry, 

Fri. 

7 - 

German, Elemen¬ 


Arnold and Clough. 



tary. 


8. Book-keeping. 


7 - 

Algebra. 


8.30, Delsarte. 


7 - 

American History. 


8.30, English Composition 


7 - 

Drawing. 

Wed. 

3.30, Cooking. 


7 - 

Physiology. 


7. Shakespeare, 


8 . 

German Reading. 


Othello. 


8 . 

French, Advanced. 


7.30, Gymnastics (men). 


8 . 

French, Elementary. 


8. Dante (Purgatorio). 


8 . 

Geometry. 

Thurs. 

4. Biology, with Labor¬ 

Sat. 

7 - 

Chemistry. 


atory. 


7 - 

30, Gymnastics 


7. German Needle¬ 



(women). 


work. 


8 . 

Bohemian Literature 


7. Singing. 


8 . 

Electricity. 


8.30, Reading, Lang’s 


8 . 

Physics. 


Odyssey. 


8 . 

30, Dancing Class. 


In addition to these regular courses there are three 
University Extension courses. The Students’ Associa¬ 
tion is divided into Literary, Dramatic, Musical and 
Debating sections, each of which gives an entertainment 
once a month, which is always followed by an informal 
dance in the gymnasium. Twice a year there are exhi¬ 
bitions of pictures, small but select. No pictures are 
admitted to the walls of Hull House but those helpful 
to the life of mind and soul, and much of the influence 
of the House is traceable to the harmony and reason¬ 
ableness of the message of the walls. On Sundays 
there are meetings of choral societies and a free concert 
in the gymnasium. A branch of the Public Library 
is established in Hull House, with a reading room 
attached. The first public bath in the city was estab¬ 
lished last year on Hull House property. It has seven¬ 
teen shower baths and one swimming bath. 

Situated as it is in the midst of the sweat shop district 
of Chicago, its residents have been the central nucleus 
of the anti-sweating agitation in Illinois. It was largely 
owing to Hull House that the Factory Inspection Law of 
1893 was passed, and it owes what efficiency it possesses 
to Hull House influence, both in framing it and in its 



Who is My Neighbor f 417 

administration, for one of its residents, Mrs. Kelley, is 
Inspector of Factories in the State of Illinois. 

Hull House breeds clubs. The Jane Club occupies 
five flats, for it is a co-operative boarding club for young 
working women. It now numbers fifty members and 
is entirely self-supporting and self-managing, without 
either matron or outside control. The members pay $3 a 
week, which covers rent, service, food, heat and light. 
The furnishing and first month’s rent were supplied by 
Hull House. An Eight-Hour Club of women meets 
twice a month at Hull House. The Working People’s 
Social Science Club meets every week. The Arnold 
Toynbee Club meets once a month. The Chicago 
Question Club meets every Sunday in the art gallery. 
The Nineteenth Ward Improvement Club, which has 
standing committees on street cleaning, etc., meets once 
a fortnight. 

In connection with this Improvement Club, a co-opera¬ 
tive association has been formed which has just started 
a co-operative coal yard. The Hull House Woman’s Club 
consists of fifty of the ablest and most active women in 
the ward. They visit the sick, relieve the poor, look after 
the inspection of streets and alleys and keep in active 
touch with all the reform movements of the city. Every 
Friday evening there is a social reception for Germans. 
Two hours are spent in singing, reading, games, etc., 
with occasional coffee drinking and entertainment. The 
Hull House Men’s Club has 150 members, and has a 
reception once a month. The Eincoln Club is a de¬ 
bating society which meets once a month with a 
Social Club of young women. They have also at 
Hull House three clubs for boys and four for girls. 
The latter are the School Girls’, the Pansy, the Story 
Telling and the Kindergarten. One club had a consec¬ 
utive course of legends and tales of chivalry. One boy, 
after a number of Charlemagne stories, flung himself 
half crying from the house and said that “ there was no 
good in coming any more now that Prince Roland was 


418 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

dead !” The Shamrock Club is a mixed club of ooys 
and girls. In the children’s dining room dinners are 
served on five-cent tickets to children who attend school in 
the neighborhood. A class of 120 Italian children meets 
in the gymnasium every Monday afternoon, where a 
superintendent and fifteen teachers instruct the little 
foreigners in the mystery of sewing and dressmaking. 
Cooking and natural history classes are also in full 
swing. Every year Hull House takes 500 children for 
a day in the country, and all last year Hull House se¬ 
cured the use of a vacant lot, rent free, for a children’s 
playground, which was filled with swings and sandheaps 
and was immensely appreciated. 

For the youngest of all, Hull House has a creche, 
where mothers can leave their little ones for five cents a 
day. The walls are hung with large photographs of 
Raphael’s Madonnas, and there are also casts from Don¬ 
atello and Della Robbia. The children talk in a famil¬ 
iar way to the babies on the wall; sometimes climbing 
upon the chairs to kiss them. The babies vary in num¬ 
ber from thirty to fifty. 

The latest addition to Hull House is a coffee house, 
built like an old English inn, with a coffee and lunch 
room, a New England kitchen, a gymnasium with 
shower baths, and a men’s club room filled with billiard 
and card tables. The coffee house is open from 6 a. m. 
to 11 p. m., every day, Sundays included. The New 
England kitchen supplies cooked food, well cooked, for 
home consumption ; coffee, soup and stews are delivered 
piping hot, every day at noon, to the neighboring fac¬ 
tories. Five cents will buy a pint of soup or coffee and 
two rolls. Hot lunches at ten cents were supplied last 
winter to the unemployed. 

There is a public dispensary open from 3 to 4 and from 
7 to 8 every day. It is hoped to put this on a mutual 
benefit plan. A physician resides in Hull House, and a 
nurse from the Visiting Nurses’ Association. There is a 
Eabor Bureau in connection with the House. 


419 


Who is My Neighbor f 

No public appeal for funds has ever been made, but 
the money comes. The residents give their lives to the 
work and they are esteemed worthy of support. No 
rent is paid for Hull House, or to adjacent lots on which 
friends of the House have put up needed buildings. All 
superintendence and teaching is given free. Residents 
pay for their board and lodging, what just covers the 
cost, which is arrived at by calculating all expenses as 
if they were incurred by a co-operative club, under the 
direction of a house committee. Such is a very brief, 
bald and inadequate survey of the social settlement. 

But no mere catalogizing of the institutions which 
have blossomed into being from the parent stem of Hull 
House can give any idea of the gracious and blessed 
influence which Miss Addams and her residents diffuse 
throughout as squalid, and as mean a precinct as is to 
be found in Chicago. You need to live in the district 
to understand. But even a casual visitor can catch a 
glimpse of it as he hears the continual ringing of the 
door bell and sees Miss Addams, pale and weary, but in¬ 
domitable to the last, answering with ready helpfulness 
to every appeal from without. Now it is a sick infant 
that wants doctoring, then it is someone out of work 
who wants a recommendation ; a third ring brings some¬ 
one in danger of eviction, and before they have cleared 
out someone else comes in with a tale of petty tyranny. 
For Miss Addams, like the name of the Lord, is a strong 
tower, and not the righteous only but all the forlorn and 
miserable in the neighborhood feel that if they can but 
run into that stronghold they are safe. From early morn 
till late at night these good and gracious women, strong 
sisters of the poor, by the potent influence of their own 
example, show their neighbors how to bear one another’s 
burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ. 


CHAPTER VI. 

IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. 

Chicago was en fete. It was a bright June morning 
between the hours of six and seven o’clock, but already 
there were many signs that something unwonted was in 
the air. Groups were gathered together at places of 
vantage, while the decorators were putting the final 
touches to the triumphal arches. Streets were being 
festooned with flags and everywhere were to be seen the 
signs of an approaching festival. * 

It was in the twentieth century. The population of 
the city was between three and four millions. Although 
it was more than ever a city of magnificent distances, 
the population was more compact, due to the more gen¬ 
eral utilization of lofty buildings for purposes of co-op¬ 
erative housekeeping. A great impetus had been given 
to the city by the construction of the oceanic canal 
which made Chicago the greatest seaport of the world. 
The Atlantic steamers now plowed their way direct from 
Europe to Lake Michigan. Their constant arrival and 
departure added fresh elements to the various phases of 
the life of the capital of America, for all rivalry to Chi¬ 
cago as the capital had disappeared at the dawn of the 
twentieth century. Even New York no longer dreamed 
of contesting the supremacy of the younger city. The 
workmen were putting the finishing touches to the mag- 


* I thought it was better to adopt the historico-prophetic method of treating this 
subject instead of making a schedule of suggestions as to what might be done 
towards making Chicago the ideal city of the world. Unlike most writers who 
enter the field of imaginary prediction, I have endeavored scrupulously to confine 
myself to the practical In describing Chicago as it might be in the twentieth 
century, I have refrained from coloring the picture by introducing any element 
that is not well within the grasp of her citizens, if only they would give their 
minds to the task of obtaining it. The majority of the changes wrought in the 
social economy of the city have been realized piece-meal elsewhere; it now re¬ 
mains for the Chicago of to-day to unite all the best things which exist in other 
cities and combine them in the great ideal Chicago of the twentieth century. 


421 



422 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

nificent series of state buildings which were reproducing 
in marble the architectural glories of the World’s Fair, 
in order to provide accommodation for the Federal Gov¬ 
ernment which was shortly to be transferred from 
Washington to the continental center. 

Chicago’s ascendancy was even more marked in social 
and municipal affairs than in the realm of commerce and 
the play of politics. For Chicago had become the ideal 
city of the world. The changes had begun about the 
middle of the last decade of the nineteenth century. The 
great impulse, born of the World’s Fair, led the citizens 
to decide, when the White City had gone up in flames, 
that their black city should be transformed according to 
the best thought of the world’s greatest thinkers. The 
great civic revival, which had liberated an hitherto un¬ 
utilized moral force in that direction, brought into ex¬ 
istence what in an ecclesiastical age would have been 
called a religious order, but which in this age was sim¬ 
ply the appearance of a body of men and women who 
were known as “helpers.” They dedicated themselves 
to the service of the city, as the followers of Loyola ded¬ 
icated themselves to the service of the Church. It was 
the first time that an order or a society of consecrated 
souls dedicated to the redemption of the municipal and 
social system who undertook the task of civic regeneration 
with the same self-sacrificing zeal which Xavier showed in 
Asia, Livingstone in Africa and Judson in Burmah. The 
civic revival had another effect more potent still in bring¬ 
ing about the transformation. Before that time the ad¬ 
ministration of the city had been entirely in the hands 
of one moiety of the citizens; the other, the home-mak¬ 
ing portion, was jealously excluded from all share in the 
rights and duties of citizenship. As a result the civic 
administration was almost brutally lacking in all the 
amenities of life. It became evident that if the city had 
to be remodeled on the ideal of the family, woman 
must not only be permitted, but even compelled, to 
take a full and fair share with man in all civic work. 


In the Twentieth Century . 423 

The result of this infusion of the more refined and cul¬ 
tured and graceful element into municipal work was 
everywhere apparent. 

Side by side with this civic revival came a new and 
great re-enforcement from the side of material develop¬ 
ment. The construction of the drainage canal, by which 
the waters of Lake Michigan and the great arterial sys¬ 
tem of the Mississippi Valley were connected, enabled 
Chicago to utilize the inert force of Lake Michigan in 
the same way in which Niagara was long ago harnessed for 
industrial purposes. Immense turbines, worked by 
the descending volume of the surplus water of the lake, 
generated electricity which, when transmitted to the 
city by cables, supplied all the power necessary to 
drive all the machinery in the city. The tapping of this 
great reservoir of costless power corresponded with the 
great moral and social upheaval which, following the 
civic revival, enabled citizens to accomplish many things 
which otherwise would have been beyond their reach. 

The City Council did not allow the monopolies of serv¬ 
ice to pass into the hands of private corporations. Every 
such source of power and of wealth was jealously pre¬ 
served for the benefit of the city. 

The sky was singularly bright and clear; hardly a 
wreath of smoke was visible over the great expanse of 
roofs which spread north, south and west as far as the 
eye could reach, for the day of smoke was almost a thing 
of the past. When the gas trust was broken up, and 
the city entered upon the supply of gas, the low prices 
which followed, together with its more general intro¬ 
duction into the houses of the citizens, led to its adop¬ 
tion as fuel. Every facility possible was made for this 
change. One of the first ordinances passed by the City 
Council in the twentieth century was a stringent decree 
drafted by Thomas J. Morgan, then Corporation Counsel, 


* At the great pottery works of Doulton, Lambeth, London, England, the 
five-minute rule is rigidly enforced, a policeman being on duty to note the time. 
Prosecution and fine follow if the five minutes’ grace is exceeded. 



424 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

rendering anyone liable to imprisonment in the Bride¬ 
well if from his chimney smoke was seen to appear for 
more than five minutes at a time. 

A great deal of heating, however, was done by the 
municipality direct. A central furnace in each block, 
fitted with the latest improvements, enabled the munici¬ 
pality to provide heat at a fixed charge for every room 
in the block. In this climate heat is as much a necessity 
as water, and at the City Hall the Heat Department had 
long been recognized as an indispensable part of the 
municipal machinery. The discontinuance of coal fires 
greatly reduced the difficulty of garbage. The un¬ 
sightly garbage boxes which used to be such an eyesore 
to the city had long ago disappeared. Early every 
morning the refuse of the city was collected by a body 
of scavengers in the municipal service, who carted it 
away before seven in the morning.* 

The garbage so collected was taken to the heat gene¬ 
rating furnaces, where the bulk of it, after it had been 
sorted, was used as fuel.f Tin cans and similar unburn- 
able rubbish was picked out, and everything was rescued 
that could be utilized.^ 

Those who had not visited Chicago since the World’s 
Fair, would have been startled by the appearance of the 
streets. All wood pavement for the sidewalks had dis¬ 
appeared, but the changes in the roadway were greater 
still. I11 the heart of the city the pavement was of 
asphalt, washed every morning and thoroughly cleaned 
before business commenced. The more frequented 
thoroughfares outside the heart of the city were paved 

*This may seem rather early, but such a municipal regulation is enforced in 
many of the old cities of the Old World, notably in Rouen, where all refuse from 
the houses must be removed during the night or early in the morning. Every 
householder has a portable garbage pail into which the refuse of the house is 
placed o”er night and removed in the morning. By 7 o’clock the refuse of the 
whole town has been Cleared away. 

+The utilization of garbage for fuel in order to generate heat and steam is 
practically carried out in the town of Rochdale, Lancashire, England, where the 
only fuel used for the municipal boilers, employed in utilizing the sewage, is the 
refuse of the city. 

JFew people have any idea of the value of the city refuse. Whole colonies in 
Paris exist entirely from the findings of the rag pickers. Chicago has hitherto not 
recognized this, and has gone so far as to pay a man $35,000 to accept a monopoly, 
which in other cities would have been a source of revenue. 



In the Twentieth Century . 425 

with wooden blocks and these also were swept and 
washed every day by an efficient staff. All streets were 
paved. * 

Before the universal paving of the streets was intro¬ 
duced, provision was made for the construction of a vast 
system of underground communication which is carried 
to a greater extent in Chicago than anywhere else in 
the world. Under every thoroughfare there runs a steel- 
lined tunnel in which arc laid the pipes, tubes and 
wires necessary for the supply of the needs of the 
city. In this underground subway, which was built so 
as to be accessible at all times, the gas, water, hot air, 
pneumatic tubes, telegraph and telephone wires and the 
electric light cables are so arranged that repairs can be 
carried on at all times without tearing up tire streets or 
the interruption of the traffic. This was immensely 
facilitated by the city’s acquiring all the monopolies of 
service. 

One of the first effects of the civic revival was the 
acceptance of the doctrine that as it was ridiculous for 
private corporations to own the roadway of the streets so 
it was wrong for them to own either street railways, gas, 
telephone or telegraph systems. One by one, as the fran¬ 
chises fell in or as they were forfeited for non-user or 
inis-user, all these monopolies came into the hands of the 
city. For accommodation of their pipes, wires and 
mains, and for the convenience of the citizens, the sub¬ 
way was constructed. This was not the only use that 
had been made of underground communication. When 
the old ruin formerly known as the Post Office was de¬ 
molished, the site was utilized for a central underground 
terminal from which lines radiated to all parts of the 
city and communicated with all the railway depots. The 

*In Chicago in 1892 of 2,900 miles of streets in the city only 900 were paved. 
Of sidewalks 3,356 were of wood and 547 of stone. No attempt was made to 
sweep the streets from day to day. Kven when the street cleaning department had 
the free service of the unemployed brigade of 3,000 men. hundreds of miles of 
streets were never cleaned at all. In Paris a municipal force of 3,000 men sufficed 
to clean the whole city from end to end every day. But in France street cleaning 
ranked as a virtue, and even the main roads in the country were swept from end 
to end, a practice which was much appreciated by bicyclists. 



426 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

street railways were free within the city limits. This 
plan was adopted in order to reduce the congestion of 
the population near the center of the town. To induce 
the citizen to give up half an hour in the morning and 
evening in traveling backward and forward to his place 
of business, it was held that the least that could be done 
to equalize matters was to allow him free transit. The 
cars were operated by electricity from underground con¬ 
ductors. As no fares had to 'be collected a single driver 
was sufficient for each car. They were under perfect con¬ 
trol. For the barbarous and dangerous rail of olden 
times was substituted the groove slot rail, laid level with 
the roadway, so that it was possible to drive across 
the tracks without a perceptible jar. 

Chicago was the center of 100,000 miles of railway, 
some 3,000 miles of which lay within the city itself. 
Grade crossings had long disappeared and the only 
memorial which remains to commemorate the annual 
massacre of the early day was a fine monument of 
Mayor Hopkins, erected at the former crossing at Six¬ 
teenth Street, where more people had been killed by the 
railroads than had been slaughtered in the massacre of 
the garrison of Fort Dearborn. 

The subway was divided into two divisions, down the 
center of which passed the footway for workmen and 
inspectors. The gas and water mains lay on the left, 
while the right was devoted to electric cables and tele¬ 
graph and telephone wires. 

The pneumatic tube system had been in use for some 
time. The construction of the subways led to the uni¬ 
versal adoption of this convenience of life. The devel¬ 
opment of the system was very rapid. It began with 
the despatch of pneumatagrams, following the example 
of Paris. Then a larger tube was introduced, and all 
letters and post cards were dispatched from the central 
office to the branches in this manner. They were look¬ 
ing forward to a still further development, when parcels 
and newspapers would also be so dispatched, but as this 


In the Twentieth Century. 427 

would have necessitated an enlargement of the subway 
there was some hesitation in undertaking so great a task. 

Great as were the changes which had taken place in 
the city, those on the Lake Front were still more remark¬ 
able. The land had been thrust forward into the lake 
as far as the breakwater, but due care had been taken to 
preserve open water for boating, bathing and landscape 
purposes. The whole of the Lake Front was laid out as 
a lovely park, half land and half water. The wonderful 
effect which had been achieved by the landscape gar¬ 
deners who laid out the World’s Fair had been reproduced 
here on an even more extended scale. There were more 
wooded islands and picturesque promontories on the 
Lake Front, while winding lakes afforded ample field for 
innumerable gondolas which gemmed at nightfall like 
fireflies the surface of the illuminated water. An¬ 
other breakwater had been constructed outside the re¬ 
claimed land and it surrounded the city like an atoll does 
a Pacific island. The boating clubs, which had become 
so remarkable a feature of Chicago, found ample space 
for exercise; while a harbor, well protected against the 
storms, gave shelter to the yachts, which on regattas and 
holidays covered the great extent of the lake with their 
white-winged sails. The Manufactures Building, or all 
that was left of it after the last great fire at Jackson Park, 
had been brought down to the Lake Front and established 
as the first of a series of half a dozen People’s Palaces 
which were one of the most conspicuous features of Chi¬ 
cago. The Home of the Waifs and Strays had been 
built on the site of the Battery, which had so long been 
an eyesore and had been demolished as a nuisance. 
At intervals along the Lake Front were bathing estab¬ 
lishments, similar to those which abound on the Seine 
and Rhine, the presence of the breakwater rendering 
their erection along the shore of the lake possible. 

The People’s Institute, of which the Manufactures 
Building was the pioneer, formed the center of 
the Democratic university system of Chicago. 


428 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

There were also polytechnics in connection with 
these institutes, the first of which had been started in 
connection with the Van Buren and Oakley Streets Peo¬ 
ple’s Institute in 1895. eac h of these institutes were 
meeting rooms, concert, reading and news rooms and all 
the social adjuncts which made Mr. Quinton Hogg’s 
polytechnic in London so valuable an agent of social pro¬ 
gress. Every ward of the city had its institute and 
every precinct its Hull House outpost. Hull House had 
gradually extended its borders until it had become 
the greatest social center of the city. It had its affiliates 
in every one of the two thousand precincts, who were 
living among the people, sharing their life and con¬ 
stantly interchanging their experience for the purpose 
of bringing the help of all to the aid of each. 

The saloon had practically disappeared, and so, very 
largely, had the drug store. Under the changed condi¬ 
tions of life, with the absence of wear and tear, over¬ 
work and the anxiety about the loss of work, improved 
cooking, and the careful training in the laws of health 
which was given to everyone in the public schools, the 
demand for medicine had shrunk so much that corner lots 
were no longer in demand for drug stores. As fast as they 
fell vacant the municipality entered into possession and 
established what was known as the New Saloon, which 
in a very short time drove the old saloon entirely out of 
the field. The ground floors of these saloons were fitted up 
like the admirable cafes of Liverpool, with provision for 
light refreshments and beverages. The supply of food and 
drink, however, was but a fractional part of the functions 
of the New Saloon. Upstairs the rooms were fitted up 
much as the Commerce Club in the Auditorium Build¬ 
ing was in 1894, with the addition of a circulating li¬ 
brary, and billiard table. Lavatories and all other con¬ 
veniences of the kind were provided free, the library and 
reading room were also free, but the customers paid for 
their refreshments. There was no interdict on the sale 
of beer and light wine, but it was the policy of the ad- 


in the Twentieth Century . 429 

ininistration to discourage the sale of intoxicants so far 
as it was possible to do so without interfering with the 
liberty of the citizen to choose his beverage.* 

The churches had undergone the same beneficent 
transformation which had taken place in the saloon. To 
begin with, there was now a Church of Chicago which 
included as its effective members all the religious or¬ 
ganizations. When Archbishop Ireland, afterwards 
Cardinal, succeeded Archbishop Feehan, a wonderful 
change came over the churches of Chicago. The Cardi¬ 
nal speedily achieved for himself on the shores of Lake 
Michigan the same position which Cardinal Manning 
used to enjoy on the banks of the Thames. His primacy 
was acknowledged with enthusiasm by men of all creeds 
and of none. He had most trouble at first with his 
own people, but after a time they also began to see that 
the ideal of the Catholic Church could only be realized 
by widening the conception of Catholicism. The germ 
of the Federation of the Ministers of Religion which had 
begun in the year of the World’s Fair was developed 
under his influence, and before long the Church of Chi¬ 
cago was organized with the Cardinal Archbishop at its 
head as Chairman. The Rev. Jenkin Lloyd Jones, the 
Unitarian, was the first Vice-President. Then was in¬ 
troduced for the first time a systematic districting of 
the city. This is now carried on so effectively that 
there is not one man, woman or child in the whole city 
who can suffer an accident or receive injury, but that it 
could be acertained in one moment, which of the 
churches must be called upon to take charge of the 
case. The Church of God in Chicago has only one 
belief, and that is to do what Christ would have done if 
He were confronted with the problems with which they 
have to deal. The principle of centralized administra- 

*This suggestion of the municipal saloon is well within the pale of practical 
achievement. The experience of the Aerated Bread Company, in London, and the 
Coffee Palaces, in Liverpool, proves that nothing pays better than a well-con¬ 
ducted place of refreshment and place of call which can be used equally by 
both sexes. The new saloon when it is established would be a source of revenue 
to the city and not a charge upon its finances. 



43 ^ If Christ Came to Chicago. 

tion, with local responsibility and close intercommunica¬ 
tion, has been adopted in the service of the Church. 
If any spiritual or moral evil occurs in one district, the 
whole of the massed forces of the associated churches 
can be depended upon to assist in its removal. Under 
this system, no district is left without the appliances of 
the civilization or of the means of grace. The churches 
have thus undergone a great change, and each is the 
center of the locality in which it stands. The minister 
every morning sits, with one or more assistants, to hear 
complaints, to listen to the distressed, to give counsel and 
to compose the difficulties of his parishioners. It is the 
new and modernized confessional, adapted to the endless 
diversities of life, in the complex civilization of the 
twentieth century. The church buildings are open all 
day and they are gradually being transformed into pic¬ 
ture galleries and museums of sculpture, commemorating 
all that is best in the world of human reverence and 
gratitude.* 

Besides this, every church was also a reading room, 
while all the class rooms were placed at the service of 
students who wished for a privacy which they could 
not find in the boarding house or at home. In the 
working class districts every church was also a concert 
room at the dinner hour. Nothing could be more 
remarkable than to see the church edifices crowded with 
grimy, brawny workmen eating out of their dinner 
pails and listening to organ recitals and vocal and 
instrumental music. 

Chicago, which long ago achieved the foremost posi¬ 
tion in musical America, had not lost ground. The 
seed sown by Mr. Thomas and Mr. Tomlins had borne 
good fruit, and no privilege was more coveted by the 


* If tbis seems strange to some who are accustomed to the scandalous spectacle 
of a church costing f 100,000 locked up from week end to weekend, and only 
opened a few hours on Sunday, presumably for the worship of God, they may be 
reminded that in Southern Europe the churches do fulfil this function. They are 
the only picture gallery of the poor man; there he can find his wax statuary 
figures and learn something of architecture and the liberal arts. 



43i 


In the Twentieth Century. 

singing classes in the public schools than to be allowed 
to sing at the midday concerts for the people.* 

The schools had also undergone a great and memo¬ 
rable change. The post of Superintendent was regarded 
as the most important in the city after those of the 
Mayor, the Chairman of the Civic Federation, the Presi¬ 
dent of Hull House and the Chairman of the Church of 
Chicago. He was a highly trained university man who 
had had practical experience in public school work. He 
had a staff selected from the brightest and best teach¬ 
ers, under the direction of a board whose duty it was 
to be perpetually on the road visiting all other cities 
for the purpose of getting pointers and picking up ideas 
for the schools in Chicago. Under their stimulating 
influence a great change had been brought about. 
Half of the teaching was done in the open air and by 
means of the natural object lessons with which the city 
abounded. The idea suggested by the German, the 
Austrian and the Irish villages had been taken up, and in 
Chicago there could be found, in the public parks, typical 
specimens of the buildings and scenery of the countries 
which had contributed of their most adventurous sons to 
the city of Chicago. Geography was studied as it is in 
various German and Swiss towns, by taking the children 
out into the country and making them draw maps and 
sketch what they saw. Natural History was not taught 
with cut-and-dried specimens in cases, but by contact with 
the living nature which surrounds us. A great improve- 
men had been made in providing every school room 
with adequate playgrounds. At first the roofs were 
utilized for this purpose, but soon it came to be regarded 
as a public disgrace if the children were not provided 
with convenient playgrounds at the street level. Every 
vacant lot in the city was taken possession of and con¬ 
verted into a playground until such time as the owner 
thought fit to build upon it. By this means the vacant 

* The experiment of having midday concerts for working people was tried on 
a small scale at the City Temple in London with remarkable success. 



432 


If Christ Came to Chicago. 

lots which used to so disfigure the city were utilized for 
the service of the children. 

One of the first things which was rendered possible 
by the union of the Church of Chicago was the possi¬ 
bility of having religious teaching in the public schools. 
The Church was broad enough and wise enough to 
draw up a system of religious teaching to which all could 
subscribe. The teaching everywhere became more prac¬ 
tical. Special attention was paid to cooking. The 
French chef who was at the head of the Culinary Depart¬ 
ment of the Education Board was at first in despair, but 
after a few years he comforted himself with the belief 
that, in the course of another generation, every woman 
in Chicago would be able to cook as well as if she had 
been born in France and had had the training of a French 
home. 

After the Superintendent of Schools, the most import¬ 
ant official in the town was the Chief of Police. His 
position, of all others, was perhaps the most coveted. 
The same feeling which leads the scions of the first fam¬ 
ilies in Europe to aspire to commissions in the army or 
navy, in the twentieth century led the youth of the city 
to aspire to positions in the Police and Fire Departments. 
As these positions could only be secured by service in 
the ranks, there was great competition for the position 
of patrolmen. Entrance was by competitive examina¬ 
tion, and for these examinations, the sons of the most 
cultured and of the wealthiest citizens entered most 
eagerly. Hence it was not at all strange to see the son 
of a millionaire in the patrolman’s helmet, superintend¬ 
ing the traffic at Madison and Ea Salle Streets, while 
others would do patrol duty before their own man¬ 
sions. This raised the standard of the police force and 
“on the word of a patrolman” came to be regarded 
as equivalent to the old phrase “ on the word of a gen¬ 
tleman,” or “on the honor of an officer.” Pupils who 
had attained special distinction at the public schools 
were sometimes, as a great reward, granted entrance 


433 


In the Twentieth Century. 

into the police force without undergoing the prelimin¬ 
ary examinations; but with that exception the rule of 
admission by competitive examination was enforced. 
The police force was largely composed of women. The 
experiment begun by the Municipal Order League 
when police matrons were appointed had led to the 
adoption of a female police. This change resulted in 
raising the moral tone of the force and facilitated the 
dealing with the social evil, and with all matters relat¬ 
ing to the welfare and custody of the children. The 
functions of the police had become greatly extended un¬ 
til from mere thief-catchers they had become the indis¬ 
pensable servants of the administration in almost every 
department of life. 

The school buildings were utilized as covered-in play¬ 
grounds of evenings by the younger children, and as 
gymnasiums by the elder; while many of the class 
rooms were used for the purpose of social intercourse by 
the inhabitants of the neighborhood.* 

Another great change which had come over the town 
was the increased attention which was paid to recrea¬ 
tion. There was a circus in every park, and a theater 
in every ward. Both circus and theater were under the 
direct control of the municipality. The circuses were 
a source of perpetual stimulus to the physical train¬ 
ing of the youth of the city. In the gymnasium 
which were connected with every school in the 
city, the achievements of the athletes of the circus 
were a constant inspiration both to boys and girls, and 
the Board of Education specially granted free admission 
to the circuses to such pupils as had distinguished them¬ 
selves in their physical training. This applied to 
both sexes, the circus being one of the institutions 
which afford women with practical object lessons as to 


* This is no more than what is done in London and several other towns. The 
London School Board allows the use of its finest school buildings during the week 
to the Happy Evenings Association, which uses them for playgrounds for the 
young children, and the Recreative Evenings Association, which utilizes them for 
gymnasiums, concerts and other means o x social intercourse and entertainment. 



434 


If Christ Came to Chicago. 

the fact that they are not made of porcelain, but that 
they can, with training, make as much of their limbs as 
if they had been born of the other sex. 

Another institution which was established for the 
mingled purpose of amusement and education was the 
Zoological Garden. There were three such gardens in 
Chicago. No lesson was given in natural history unless 
it was accompanied by a visit to the animals, which 
were lodged in cages fitted up so as to resemble as 
closely as possible their native habitat.* 

But it was the theater which was the greatest re-en¬ 
forcement of all the moral forces of the city. The 
dramatic instinct, so strongly rooted in every human 
breast, instead of being repressed, was developed and 
relied upon as a special means of cultivating the mind 
and reaching the heart of the population, and especially 
of the scholars. Every school and every Sunday School 
had its own dramatic society, and it was a proud day for 
the pious parent when her daughter was permitted to 
make her debut on the boards of the municipal theater. 
As the stage was recruited from the best citizens and the 
ablest scholars, the standard of its morality was at least 
as high as that prevailing in the Sunday School and the 
church choir. Any ward without its municipal theater 
was regarded as being in a state of spiritual destitution 
which called for the prayers of the churches, and their 
immediate assistance to supply the want.f 

This work in Chicago began by a relative of Mrs. 
Potter Palmer who had been studying in Germany and 
who came back to Chicago full of the idea of starting a 
town theater. Happening one day to look in at the 
Park Theater, in order to contrast the stage of 


*The Jardin des Plantes in Paris is a zoological and botanical garden to which 
all citizens have free access. Most of the German cities have zoological gardens 
for the instruction and amusement of their citizens. 

t No one who has been to Oberammergau and seen the way in which a popula¬ 
tion of two or three thousand peasants can supply a whole dramatic troupe, 
capable of playing not merely the “Passion Play,” but most of the classical 
dramas of their native land, can doubt that in the theater, rightly conducted, lies 
the most potent instrument of popular education which human hands have yet 
grasped. 



In the Twentieth Century. 435 

Chicago with what he had seen in his univer¬ 
sity town in Germany, he was unutterably dis¬ 
gusted by the vulgarity and the obscenity of the 
play and the orgies of debauchery which followed 
the performance. As a result, he decided to make 
a beginning then and there. Calling upon the Mayor 
he laid facts before him. This led to the sum¬ 
mary closing of the theater and the forfeiture of the 
license. He then formed a syndicate which decided to 
supersede the old farrago of brutality and indecency by a 
first-class variety entertainment. He decided to begin 
on a small scale and made a tour both of America and 
of Europe in order to ascertain what could be best done 
in order to obtain popular amusement that would amuse 
without degrading. When he returned he brought with 
him assistance which enabled him to make the Park 
Theater the most popular institution in Chicago. Its 
success led to the improvement of the standard of popular 
entertainments in other quarters, and after a time the syn¬ 
dicate felt strong enough to undertake the regular drama. 
From that time their progress was rapid. The church 
co-operated heartily and at last, at the suggestion of the 
Civic Federation, the City Council took the matter in 
hand. There was no pedantry about the entertain¬ 
ments. ' Man is a creature who needs to be amused, and 
amusement must be supplied to him in his own sphere 
with an upward tendency. This was recognized to the 
full, and in the seafaring quarters the entertainments were 
of a very free and easy nature. It was held that where 
the need was greatest, there must the means of grace be 
the most abundant; and it was a sight for the gods and 
men to see Archbishop Ireland presiding over an enter¬ 
tainment in the Sailor’s Home where jolly tars, the 
hornpipe and the fiddlers, were playing as merrily as 
ever they did in any popular resort ungraced by the 
presence of a dignitary of the Church. 

The means for supplying these appliances of civiliza¬ 
tion were furnished with less strain upon the resources of 


436 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

the citizens than was felt under the old system. This 
was partly due to the action of some public-spirited mil¬ 
lionaires, and also by the immense resources of revenue 
provided by the municipalization of the monopolies of 
service. Great markets were established in which the 
producers of the necessaries of life were able to sell di¬ 
rectly to the consumer without the interference of the 
middleman. This of course is no more than what is 
done in every center of civilization in Europe, but Chi¬ 
cago went one better, as it has been her custom to do. 
The way was opened up by the action of Mr. Marshall 
Field and Mr. Leiter, who decided that as they had made 
a sufficient number of millions in their great stores 
it would be an interesting social experiment if they were 
to hand them over to the city. The City Council had 
long been composed of the best citizens in Chicago, who 
administered its affairs with efficiency and probity. 
The two great stores of Marshall Field & Co. and 
Siegel, Cooper & Co., passed into the hands of the City 
Council, fully stocked and with an adequate capital for 
carrying on the business. Other millionaires followed 
this example and soon the city found itself in the pos¬ 
session of income enough to carry out the realization of 
most of its ideals. 

I referred to the fact that the skyscrapers had been 
built for the purpose of co-operative housekeeping. The 
first of these was established by the municipality for the 
housing of the employes of Siegel, Cooper & Co., after 
it passed into their hands. No one was compelled to 
live there unless they pleased, but the advantages were 
found to be so great and so much above what could be 
obtained elsewhere that it was soon filled. The cook, 
for instance, was a first-class French chef and there was 
also in connection with it a large library with reading 
rooms, concert rooms, etc. There were also established, 
in connection with these co-operative homes, branch es¬ 
tablishments in the country, which in summer time were 
always crowded. The roads were so good that there was 


437 


In the Twentieth Century. 

nothing to prevent the employes from cycling backwards 
and forwards to their place of business and their summer 
retreat. Cycling, I may add, has come into almost uni¬ 
versal use both for men and women, with great advan¬ 
tages to themselves, and in the distribution of population. 
In these great homes domestic service became a profession. 
The cooks and the housemaids in the co-operative homes 
had at least the social position of a stenographer or a 
retail clerk. They worked in relays, and after they had 
finished they were as free to go and come as any clerk in 
an office or store. 

The hours of labor generally had been adjusted to the 
eight-hour standard, with an immense gain to family life 
and without diminishing the economic value of the day’s 
labor. Child labor was strictly forbidden, and the spec¬ 
tacle of a child of twelve or thirteen working in a store 
was so unusual as to lead to an immediate summons to 
the police. A labor bank had been established where 
those who were temporarily out of work could pawn 
themselves on security of their future labor, and a system 
of co-operative distribution among workers had been es¬ 
tablished on the basis of labor certificates which, within 
a small area and among friends and neighbors, facili¬ 
tated exchange and dispensed with the costly service of 
the middleman. When employment was slack and 
periods of depression came, exact information was ob¬ 
tained as to the number of the unemployed and provision 
made for the utilization of their labor in the service of 
public improvement. Men could always work for their 
rations, and an unemployed man was considered as a 
wicked waste of a valuable asset of the community. The 
Church of Chicago in this followed the example of the 
Matter Day Saints, who have from the first regarded the 
organization of labor and the employment of the unem¬ 
ployed as one of the first of religious duties.* 

* Few persons interested me more during my stay in Chicago than George Q. 
Cannon, of the Latter Day Saints, whom I met at the Auditorium Hotel on his way 
through the country. I had a long talk with him on the subject of the organization 
of labor and the relieving of the workless worker, which forms so important a 



438 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

All pawnbrokers had disappeared and their places 
were taken up by popular banks of deposit managed by 
the municipality. Instead of paying ten per cent per 
month as was the case under the old system, the deposi¬ 
tors did not pay more than ten per cent a year, and the 
municipal pawn shop, like the municipal saloon, more 
than paid its running expenses. The poor were relieved 
upon very different principles than what had formerly 
prevailed. The poorhouse at Dunning, to which at the 
end of the nineteenth century the helpless and forlorn 
were dispatched by the slowest trains that crawled over 
the iron way, in order to be packed together in a 
crowded building, is a thing of the past. The change 
was made not so much for the sake of the poor as in 
order to give better opportunity to their neighbors to 
visit them. After grave discussion and long considera¬ 
tion the Church of Chicago decided that with the poor- 
house at Dunning, this means of grace was too far removed 
from the Christians of Chicago. It was necessary for 
their own souls that they should visit the sick and the 
afflicted, and the homes of the oppressed. As they 
could not find time to go down to Dunning the poor 
must be brought closer to them and established at their 
doors. Hence instead of one huge mass of overgrown 
pauperism, there were a multitude of citizens’ alms¬ 
houses, where the poor people were established 
within easy range of their neighbors. The churches 
took special charge of these institutions, maintained 
their efficiency and supplied the visitors. The responsi¬ 
bility of the churches for the moral and social well¬ 
being of the community was sharply recognized, and 
for any failure were taken to account promptly. 

In the midst of all the preparations which were going- 
on, on this bright June day, one church was conspicuous 
for the absence of any adornment. It was draped in black; 

feature of American polity. President Cannon’s ideas upon polygamy are detest¬ 
able enough, but as a captain ot industry, if I were an unemployed man I would 
rather look to him than to most of the Christian bishops with whom I have had 
any acquaintance. 



439 


In the Twentieth Century . 

and the reason why this church stood out in solitary gloom 
amid its gay and decorated neighbors was because of the 
birth of an illegitimate child in the block for which it 
had accepted responsibility to the Church of Chicago. 
Such a scandal, it was held, could not have occurred if 
the local church had done its duty. As the church had 
not been able to prove that it had done all that it might 
have done to have remedied the evil from which this 
seduction sprang it was doomed to wear penitential garb 
on this day of public rejoicing. 

Medical service was provided free for all the citizens. 
The reason for making this municipal change was be¬ 
cause it was held that disease in most cases arose from 
conditions for which the individual was not responsible, 
and that it was often traceable directly to the neglect 
of the city authorites. It was thought only just that 
if the individual citizen had to bear the pain and 
risk of death resulting from his illness, the least the 
city could do was to give him a free doctor and free 
drugs. The convalescent system of Chicago was the 
wonder of the world. Mr. George M. Pullman on 
his retirement from business had handed over three- 
quarters of his immense wealth to be employed in con¬ 
veying convalescents and consumptives by Pullman cars 
to regions where their recovery would be expedited. 
Floating hotels in the summer season surrounded by a 
small flotilla of pleasure craft were anchored off the 
more beautiful and shelter spots of the lake, where, in 
the midst of air and water, the patients made a much 
more rapid recovery than was possible on land. 

Disease, however, had been much improved owing to 
the improved cooking which had been brought about by 
the combined agency of the public schools and of Mr. 
Kohlsaat’s bakery. Mr. Kohlsaat, when he devoted him 
self exclusively to the editorship of the Inter Ocean , had 
followed the example of Mr. Marshall Field, and handed 
over his bakery to the city to be utilized for the purpose 
of experimenting in supplying well-cooked food at a 


440 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

minimum cost. The result was so successful that the 
Civic Restaurant became a kind of Cooks’ University. 
The menu was always published the day in advance, 
and householders and their cooks could come down and 
take lessons in the preparing of the delicate dishes with 
which the Civic Chef made cooking almost a fine art. 

It was not cooking alone which had become a fine art 
The much-neglected art of hospitality, especially civic 
hospitality, had been revived. Nothing in the traditions 
of the Lord Mayor of London or the Syndic of Florence 
could rival the hospitality of the Mayors of Chicago. 
They entertained as a matter of course every distin¬ 
guished visitor who arrived on the American continent. 
This notable innovation was begun in the first mayoralty 
of Mrs. Potter Palmer, which made the year 1900 
memorable in the history of America. Nor was it only 
at banquets that they displayed their hospitality. Gala 
performances, operatic, dramatic and musical, were pro¬ 
vided for their guests, while all the citizens regarded it 
as an honor to keep open house for the entertainment 
of the stranger, for open house was not confined to 
distinguished strangers. The millionaires no longer 
kept their treasures of art to themselves and a select 
circle of friends. The same generous rule which pre¬ 
vails in the Old World was accepted here. On visiting 
days the poorest citizen in Chicago could drink his fill 
of beauty in the picture galleries of the richest million¬ 
aire on Prairie Avenue. A citizen who possessed valu¬ 
able pictures and excluded the citizens from seeing them 
was regarded as virtually a thief, and when due repre¬ 
sentation had been made and made in vain, was boy¬ 
cotted by his neighbors and excommunicated by the 
Church. 

Owing to the general introduction of taller buildings 
in the residential quarters, great spaces had been cleared 
and devoted to parks and recreation grounds. Each 
nationality had its own playing ground, in which it pur¬ 
sued its national sports. The streets were planted with 


In the Twentieth Century. 441 

shade trees and provided with seats. Fountains played 
in all the public places and in winter time the squares 
were converted into winter gardens where artificial 
warmth enabled the citizens to enjoy the music and the 
society which in summer time they found in the parks. 
Every citizen was supplied every week with the official 
gazette of the city, by which everyone was kept in¬ 
formed as to the movement of the civic life. 

Pageants were numerous and splendid. On Mayor’s Day 
the procession which filed through the city cast the civic 
pageants of the Lord Mayors of London far in the shade. 
But that was only one of the half a dozen which bright¬ 
ened the civic life of Chicago. Chicago Day was a great 
popular fete. Bands played, processions moved through 
the streets, all gay with flowers and bunting, all those 
who had deserved best of the city were decorated and the 
day finished with a grand display of fireworks. The 
whole world was ransacked for hints how to beautify and 
enliven these fetes. The Fete Dieu of Southern Europe 
supplied many hints which enabled the Master of Cere¬ 
monies to decorate the streets of the city with a wealth 
of beauty the like of which was never seen in the Windy 
City in the olden times. The great aquatic fete which 
took place at the annual regatta was another ceremonial 
which it was worth coming to Chicago to see. 

Enough has been said to indicate the scope and range 
of civic life which has made Chicago the ideal city of 
the world. Meanwhile the sun had risen high in the 
heavens and the first notes of the national anthem were 
heard mingled with the sounds of many voices, and the 
cheering of the crowd that was mustered thickly round 
the magnificent palace which had taken the place of the 
old City Hall. As far as the eye could see the streets 
were gay with flags and bright with arches. An expec¬ 
tant crowd lined the sidewalks waiting for the approach 
of a procession. Bells were ringing and now and again 
from the Lake Front could be heard the deep boom of 
the salute of the men-of-war lying off the harbor. Pres- 


44 2 tf Christ Came to Chicago. 

ently an advance corps of cavalry trotted down the street 
in front of the prpcession. The notes of German music 
filled the air and the smart uniforms of the Imperial es¬ 
cort excited universal admiration as they swept by. 
Presently, surrounded by a brilliant staff, there rode down 
the street a resolute soldier, with an imperial presence, 
saluting as he ackowledged the cheers of the enthusias¬ 
tic people. It was the German Emperor on his way to 
the City Hall to be presented with the freedom of the 
city of Chicago, which had been voted to him on his 
first visit to the American Continent, to which he had 
come expressly in order to see for himself the ideal city 
of the world. 


CHAPTER VII 

A CLOSING WORD. 

If Christ came to Chicago what would He wish me 
to do ? 

That is the question with which I hope every reader 
will close this book. Nor is the answer difficult or far 
to seek. 

For what He would have you to do is to follow in His 
footsteps and be a Christ to those among whom you 
live, in the family, in the workshop, in the city and in 
the state. 

Be a Christ. The more you disbelieve in Christianity 
as it is caricatured, the more earnestly should you labor 
to live the life and to manifest the love and, if need be, 
to die the death of Jesus of Nazareth. 

Even if you doubt whether He ever really lived, God 
Incarnate in mortal flesh, the more imperative is your 
duty to endeavor so far as you can, to realize in your 
own person that supreme embodiment of Eove, in order 
that now, if never before, there may be on earth a Messiah 
of God who is Eove among men who are perishing for 
want of love. 

Be a Christ!—everything is summed up in that. 

What Christ would do if He came to Chicago in these 
last days and were living in your circumstances, even so 
do you ; and do it not once or twice in moments of 
spiritual ecstacy or of moral enthusiasm, but do it all the 
time. 

Each day’s duties at home or at work, every friend 
whom you love, every acquaintance which you form, 
every occasion where a duty confronts you and every 
opportunity where you can manifest love by word or 
deed or look—there and then you can be a Christ. If you 


443 


444 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

are selfish and unloving, then instead of being God’s 
Messiah to ’your fellow men you are shutting out God 
from a portion of His own world. 

Whenever you give up yourself—your time, which is 
a part of your life ; your thought, which is a part of 
your mind ; your love, which is a part of your soul—to 
serve others, you are, so far as that sacrifice goes, mani¬ 
festing God’s Love to man. For God is Love and His 
service is sacrifice of self in helping others. 

His commandrftent is exceeding broad. As I have 
attempted to show in the previous pages, it applies 
especially to a great field of human service, with which 
many imagine religion has nothing to do. A religion 
which has nothing to do with any human effort is not 
religion. For religion is the life of man going out of 
himself to unite itself to the life of other men so that 
they may all be one in Love, which is God. 

The New Redemption for which the world has long 
been waiting wearily is nigh at hand. The old forms 
having served their turn and done their work are pass¬ 
ing away. They hinder where they ought to help, and 
fail to interpret the full orbed revelation of the will of 
God toward us in all its bearings upon the social, political 
and national life of man. 

“A new commandment give I unto you, that you love 
one another,” is still, alas, a new commandment in a 
world that is more or less avowedly dominated by the 
doctrine of Cain. The New Redemption will come 
when that new commandment has cast out the Evil 
Spirit, the Prince of this world, whose watchword is, 
“ Each man for himself and the devil take the hind¬ 
most.” For it was the hindmost whom Christ came to 
save. 

For this New Redemption for which the world waits, 
there must come a new Catholicity, transforming and 
widening and redeeming the old. The new religion, 
which is but the primitive essence of the oldest of all 
religions, has but one formula—Be a Christ! The new 


445 


A Closing Word. 

church which is already dimly becoming conscious of 
its own existence, under all kinds of ecclesiastical and 
dogmatic and agnostic concealments, is not less broad. 
What is the Church ? It is the Union of all who Love 
in the Service of all who Suffer. 

Are you willing to help? If Christ came to your 
city would He find you ready ? If so you will not have 
long to wait. For the least of these, My brethren, are 
a numerous tribe, and an hour will not pass after you 
close this book before your readiness will be put to the 
test. And Christ will then see in your case, “ How 
the men, My brethren, believe in Me.” 


THE END. 


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immoral or illegal purpose or in contravention of the ordinances of Chicago or the statutes of Illinois. Neither he nor his agent had 
ever visited the premises since the lease was granted “ Acting upon information acquired since receiving your communication, I 
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452 


If Christ Came to Chicago. 

STATE OF ILLINOIS, I 
Chicago, County of Cook, f 

Norman A. Lees, being first duly sworn, deposes and says that the annexed 
sheets attached to and forming part of this affidavit, have been compiled by him, 
and that the description of the property duly numbered and tabulated thereon, is 
to the best of his belief true. Norman A. Lees. 

Subscribed and sworn to before me, a Justice of the Peace, for the Town of 
South Chicago, County of Cook, State of Illinois, this 3d day of January, A. D. 1894. 

D. J. Lyon, Justice of the Peace. 

The foregoing list, as will be seen, does not attempt to include all 
the houses used for this purpose in Chicago. The field is too wide. I 
selected two districts, Armour Avenue and the Levee, and instructed 
a detective and police reporter to make an exhaustive return of the 
houses used for purposes of prostitution in those districts. When he 
had done so, I sent another person around to check his information as 
to names, etc. I then submitted the return so obtained to a competent 
real estate agent, with instructions to obtain from the official records 
the name of the owner and the name and address of the tax-payer. In 
order to avoid any mistake or injustice, inadvertently committed 
through an error in the returns, I sent notice in the following form to 
all the tax-payers named in the list. 


M. January 12, 1894. 

Sir : I find your name in a return prepared for me as paying taxes on premises 
situate.on behalf of the owner. 


As these premises are described on affidavit in the same return as being openly 
used as a House of Prostitution, in contravention of Articles 1602—5 of the Munici¬ 
pal Code, I write to ask whether you are aware of the fact, or whether you have 
any explanations to offer, or corrections to make, before I publish the said list of 
owners of Houses of Ill Fame in the book on Chicago which I am preparing for 
the press. I am your obedient servant, 

William T. Stead. 

One of the tax-payers informed me that I had rendered myself liable 
to fine and imprisonment by the mere fact of issuing this circular. It 
may be so, but I think it would not have been just to have risked in¬ 
cluding any name in the list without giving ample opportunity for 
correction and explanation. The list is as precedes, after emendations 
made in consequence of the issue of this circular. 

The foregoing list of houses of ill fame, their keepers, owners, 
agents, etc., has only been compiled after a very careful inquiry into 
the matter by a fully competent investigator and a real estate expert. 
Owing, however, to the constant change of residence on the one hand, 
and the frequent sale of property on the other, it may not be exactly 
correct when it meets the eye of the reader. The list was correct on 
Jan. 1st of this year (1894), and it therefore fulfills the purpose for 
which it was compiled. 

Chapter 38, Section 97, of the Criminal Code of the State of Illi¬ 
nois, says: 

Whoever keeps or maintains a house of ill fame or place for the practice ol 
prostitution or lewdness, or whoever patronizes the same, or lets any house, room, 
or other premises for any such purpose, or shall keep a common, ill-governed and 
disorderly house, to the encouragement of idleness, gaming, drinking, fornication 
or other misbehavior, shall be fined not exceeding J200. * * * * And whoever 
shall lease to another any house, room, or other premises, in whole or in part, for 
any of the uses or purposes finable under this section, or knowingly permits the 
same to be so used or occupied, shall be fined not exceeding $200, and the house or 
premises so leased, occupied or used, shall be held liable for and may be sold for 
any judgment obtained under this section. * * * * 





Appendices. 453 

EXTRACT FROM MUNICIPAL CODE OF CHICAGO. 

No person shall keep or maintain or be an inmate of, or in any way connected 
with or in any way contribute to the support of any house of ill fame or assigna¬ 
tion, under a penalty of not less than ten dollars for each offense, and the further 
penalty of one hundred dollars for every twenty-four hours such person shall keep 
or maintain said house after the first conviction, or after any such person shall have 
been ordered by any member of the police force to discontinue the same. 

Every person found in any house of ill fame or assignation, shall be considered 
an inmate within the meaning of Section 1602 of this Article. 

Every house of ill fame or house of assignation, where men and women resort 
for the purpose of prostitution, is hereby ordered to be a nuisance. 


Appendix B. 

THE CHICAGO CENTRAL RELIEF ASSOCIATION. 

The following are particulars of the Constitution and Objects of the 
Central Relief Association, formed in December at a conference sum¬ 
moned by the Civic Federation: 

President—T. W. Harvey. 

Vice-Chairman Executive Committee—C. S. H. Mixer. 

Treasurer—Lyman J. Gage. 

Chairman Finance Committee—John J. Mitchell. 

Auditor—Andrew McLeish. 

The Executive Committee is composed exclusively of the chairmen 
of the various Standing Committees, as follows : 

On Finance—J. J. Mitchell. 

On City, County and State Relations—Alderman Madden. 

On Provisions of Supplies in Food, Fuel, etc. and Storage—C. S. 
H. Mixer. 

On Distribution of Supplies in Kind—Otis S. Favor. 

On Transportation—R. A. Waller. 

On Shelter of Men—D. J. Harris. 

On Shelter and Employment of Women—Dr. Sarah H. Stevenson. 
On Hospitals and Homes—Mrs. Potter Palmer. 

On Children’s Homes—Mrs. J. M. Flower. 

On Medical Aid—Dr. Frank S. Johnson. 

On Visitation—Professor C. R. Henderson and Professor A. W. 
Small, Vice Chairman. . 

On Organization and Co-operation with Charitable Institutions—T. 
W. Harvey. 

On Co-operation with Social Organizations and Clubs—John W. 
Brooks, Jr. . 

On Co-operation with Churches and Religious Organizations—P. F. 
Pettibone. 

On Publications and Press—R. A. Waller. 

On Auditing—A. McLeish. 

On Legal Action—H. B. Hurd. 

To the Public: All who give money to men on the streets or at the door are 
doing harm. They are increasing pauperism, and doing a wrong to the individual 

an Do°not e gfve tickets that will entitle the recipient to food or lodging without in¬ 
vestigation, or without an equivalent in work. . . 

It is iust as harmful to give food, shelter or clothing to the unworthy as it is to 
give them money, since the one as well as the other gives support to lazy and dis¬ 
honest people. 



454 


If Christ Came to Chicago. 

• 

Give only such tickets as are provided by reputable institutions, and which 
refer families or single persons to the various institutions where their case will be 
investigated, work provided for those who are able, hospitals for those who are 
sick; fuel, food or money to families who are in distress. 

Most of the following institutions issue such tickets either to their members or 
to the public at large, viz.: 

The County Agent, No. 107 South Clinton Street, who cares for permanent 
paupers or families in which there is no probability of their bettering their con¬ 
dition. * 

The Chicago Relief and Aid Society, that investigates and cares for families who 
are usually self-supporting, at its central office, Nos. 51 and 53 La Salle Street, 
and its various branch offices, as follows: No. 420 Lincoln Avenue, No. 1105 
Milwaukee avenue, No. 529 West Monroe Street, No. 3x7 West Polk Street, No. 380 
South Halsted Street, No. 3101 Wabash Avenue, No. 5433 Lake Avenue, No. 395 
North Clark Street. Work for married men at their woodyard. 

The United Hebrew Charities, No. 223 Twenty-Sixth Street, that relieve suffering 
and prevent pauperism among the Jewish poor of the city. 

The German Relief and Aid Society, at No. 49 La Salle Street, that gives aid to 
Germans who have been in the city less than three years. 

St. Andrew’s Society, at No. 1341 Fulton Street, that relieves all deserving 
Scotchmen. 

St. George’s Society, at No. 195 Washington Street, grants relief to persons of 
English parentage. 

Danish Relief Society, No. 249 West Chicago Avenue, assists worthy Danish 
people. 

Polish National Alliance, No. 574 Noble Street. This is a National organization 
holding beneficiary funds, and for the present emergency a general relief com¬ 
mittee has been formed, which gives food, fuel and money for rent, to worthy 
resident Polish families. 

Scandinavian Relief Society, at No. 133 North Peoria Street, that aids Swedish, 
Norwegian and Danish worthy poor. They give relief in the form of provisions 
and lodgings. 

Norwegian Society, corner Peoria and Indiana Streets, that gives immediate 
temporary relief to all Norwegians. 

Bohemian Society, No. 776 West Twelfth Street, that aids all worthy Bohemians. 
The society has visitors and all worthy cases receive food, coal and clothing, but no 
money. 

Swiss Benevolent Society, No. 49 La Salle Street, to assist indigent Swiss people 
with pecuniary relief or hospital care. 

Soldiers’ Home in Chicago, Nos. 51 and 53 La Salle Street, devotes the income 
from its investments toward relieving indigent soldiers, their widows and chil¬ 
dren. 

The G. A. R., that gives relief to needy soldiers and their widows. 

The Brotherhood Employment Bureau, at No. 37 Michigan Street, that gives 
work to able-bodied men. 

The St. Vincent de Paul Society, which has a bureau of relief in every Catholic 
parish in the city. 

The Visiting Nurses’ Association, Room 1116 Masonic Temple, furnishes 
nurses and promotes cleanliness and procures proper care for the sick. 

The Young Women’s Christian Association, with their various homes and 
offices, as follows: Home, No. 228 Michigan avenue; transient homes, No. 367 
Jackson Boulevard, No. 3528 Wentworth Avenue, No. 6307 Stewart Boulevard; 
Rosalie Court Home, No. 583 Rosalie Court; employment bureau, No. 243 Wabash 
Avenue; travelers’ aid department, Englewood branch. 

Woman’s Club Emergency Bureau, Room 29 Athenaeum Building, gets situa¬ 
tions and gives work and shelter to women. 

Minnetonka Workingwoman’s Home, No. 21 South Peoria Street, which is a 
home for self-supporting women, $2.50 per week. 

Home for Friendless, No. 1920 Wabash Avenue, free for women and children. 

St. Joseph’s Home for the Friendless (Catholic), free and pay, No. 409 South May 
Street. 

Home of Providence for Unemployed Girls, Calumet Avenue and Twenty-Sixth 
Street, Catholic, free and pay. 

Adelphia Industrial Home, Austin, Ill., for girls, free. 

Workingwoman’s Home, No. 529 Monroe Street, free and pay. 

Anchorage Mission, No. 125 Plymouth Place, free, for women. 

W. C. T. U. Home, No. 870 West Madison Street. 

Woman’s Shelter, corner Polk and Halsted Streets. 

Chicago Exchange for Woman’s Work, No. 130 Wabash Avenue, provides a 


Appendices. 45 5 

depot for the reception and sale of any marketable article which a woman can 
make in her own home, or any valuable article which her necessities oblige her to 
dispose of. 

Masonic, Odd Fellows, and other brotherhood organizations care for their own 
members. 

The various free dispensaries, of which there are twenty-two in the city. 

Bureau of Justice to assist in securing legal protection against injustice for 
those who are unable to protect themselves. 

For information concerning applicants for relief of which you are in doubt as 
to the proper reference, apply to No. 82 Market Street, to the Central Relief 
Association. 

For information concerning the work of societies doing relief work in Chicago 
apply to the Central Relief Association, No. 1015 The Rookery. They refer to all 
the various institutions to which any applicant may properly belong. They are 
now preparing an alphabetical list by names and street numbers, in which all 
those who are receiving aid will be recorded, and which can be examined by any 
citizen who desires to know what any society may be doing, thereby preventing 
fraud and duplication, and also furthering the work of properly aiding the worthy 
poor. 

There are many hospitals and homes which are known to our citizens generally, 
for men, women and children, and there are various reformatory institutions of 
which information may be had at the office of the Central Relief Association, No. 
1015 Rookery Building. 

Information concerning other relief societies will be published as soon as the 
committee on co-operation have the facts ready for publication. 

By order of Executive Committee. 

T. W. Harvey, Chairman. 


Appendix C. 

SOME CURIOSITIES OF CHICAGO ASSESSMENTS. 

The present system of assessing real and personal property in 
Chicago has been denounced as scandalous and unjust, iniquitous 
and contrary to sound policy by the Mayor of Chicago, by successive 
Comptrollers, and by the Finance Committee of the City Council. It 
has been vehemently assailed by the Chicago Times , which has pub¬ 
lished a series of articles commenting in the strongest terms upon the 
injustice and the disparity of the taxes levied upon the poor property 
owner, who pays through the nose while his rich neighbor goes com¬ 
paratively scot free. The facts, however, are so startling and the figures 
so strong that it is impossible to frame a statement which is more damn¬ 
ing than a few extracts from the tax books. In orderto seehowthings 
stood I instructed a real estate agent to go through the official re¬ 
turns and extract from them the assessments of real and personal 
property made in the cases of most prominent people in Chicago, in¬ 
cluding the millionaires, the aldermen, the members of the Civic 
Federation and the newspapers, etc. I also instructed him to obtain 
the assessments of the more notable buildings in the city, and for the 
purpose of comparison to obtain the assessed value of various smaller 
premises owned by wage workers and others. The returns which he 
has made will be scrutinized with keen interest in Chicago, and they 
will afford much matter for curious comment elsewhere. The returns 
would have been much more complete if it would have been possible 
to have employed a real estate valuer to have made a really fair valu¬ 
ation, but this is difficult, especially in the case of personalty. I 
could not send a valuer into the stables of a millionaire, nor could I 
introduce a competent assessor into the domesticities of Mr. Yerkes. 
There seems to be no reason to doubt the general correctness of the 
statement that taking the city all around the assessed value is 



456 


If Christ Came to Chicago. 


only one-eighth of the real value. The owners of small houses are 
often assessed at one-fourth, one-third, and even one-half of their real 
value, while the owners of the mansions and the sky-scrapers escape 
with one-tenth, one-twentieth, or even one-thirtieth of their real 
value. The following is a table of some of the curiosities of Chicago 
assessments. Personalty to the amount of $500 to $ 1,000 is exempt 
from taxation. 

SOME CURIOSITIES. 


Owners, Clinton J. Warren and Adolphus W. Maltby, Lots 82, 83, 86, 87, 90, 91, 94, 
95, 98. except east 49 feet of lots 91, 94, 95 and 98, Burton’s subdivision of lot 14, 
Boonson’s addition to Chicago. $95,000. 

“ Plaza.” Seven-story apartment. South-east corner Clark and North Avenue. 
1892 assessed value $10,000. Taxes paid, $982.80. 1893 assessed value $30,060. 

U. S. Brewing Co. (4824 Cook Street.) 1893 returned personal property at $50.00. 

Union Rendering Company, Stockyards. 1893 returned the following personal 
property : 25 horses, $250; 11 wagons, $110; one safe, $15.00. Total $390. 

Four-story brick building, Milwaukee and North Avenue. (Stores below and 
hall on top.) Worth at least $20,000, assessed in 1893 at $1,830, or one-eleventh. 
Owned by Joseph Sokup, formerly West Town Assessor. 

West Chicago Street Railroad Company personalty is assessed at $275,000. 

Chicago City Railway Company is assessed $260,000 for personalty. 180 horses 
assessed at $8,000; 500 cars, at $50,000; machinery, etc., at $100,000, and money at 
$100,000. 

North Chicago Street Railroad Company returns $65,500 personalty, of which the 
following are some of the items ; 200 horses, $2,800 ; 220 cars, $20,060 ; machinery, 
$25,000. 


ALDERMEN. 

Ward. 

1st. John J. Coughlin, 145 E- Madison-st. 

Louis I. Epstean, 113 E. Randolph-st. 

2d. Daniel J. Horan, 169 Eighteenth-st. 

Martin Best, 1429 Michigan-av.•. 

3d. Edward Marrener, 3227 Groveland-av..... 

Eli Smith, 3147 Vernon-av. 

4th. John W. Hepburn, 3633 Ellis-av. 

Martin B. Madden, 3563 Forest-av. 

5th. John Vogt, 448 Twenty-sixth-st. 

Patrick J. Wall, 605 Twenty-seventh-st. 

6th. Henry Stuckart, 2519 Archer-av., 3 horses, $300; 3 cows, $400 

Thomas Reed, 2500 Main-st. 

7th. John A. Cook, 624 S. Halsted-st. 

William J. O’Neill, 547 S. Halsted-st. 

8th. William Loeffler, 369 Johnson-st. 

Martin Morrison, 362 Blue Island-av. 

9th. Frederick Rohde, 278 Washburne-av. 

Joseph E- Bid well, 736 W. Twelfth-st. 

10th. Charles C. Schumacher, 266 Blue Island-av. 

John F. Dorman, 971 Twenty-second-st .. 

nth. George B. Swift, 52 Loomis-st. 

William D. Kent, 450 W. Congress-st. 

12th. Robert L. Martin, 719 W. Van Buren-st. 

James L. Campbell, 99 DeKalb-st. 

13th. Charles F. Swigart, 280 Park-av. 

Martin Knowles, 337 Walnut-st. 

14th. James Keats, 225 W. Chicago-av. 

William L. Kamerling, 339 Glenwood-av. 

15th. James Reddick, 143 Perry-av. 

Michael Ryan, 601 W. North-av. 

16th. Peter J. Ellert, 482 N. Ashland-av. 

Stanley H. Kunz. 685 W. North-av. 

17th. J. N. Mulvihill, 118 Austin-av.*. 

Stephen M. Gosselin, 182 N. Green-st. 

18th. William F. Mahony, 74 Center-av. 

John J. Brennan, 15 S. Carpenter-st. 

19th. John Powers, 243 S. Canal and 170 Madison-sts., saloons_ 

Thomas Gallagher, 256 S. Halsted-st. 


Personal. 

Nothing. 


$100.00 

Nothing. 

41 

< 4 
44 

.$800.00 
Nothing. 

14 

< 4 


4 4 


4 4 


$200.OO 

Nothing. 

4 < 


< ( 
4 4 
<4 


Nothing. 

4 4 
4 4 


44 








































Appendices. 


457 


Ward. 

20th. Albert Potthoff, 97 Willow-st. 

Otto Hage, 185 Southport-av. 

21st. Joseph H. Krnst, 271 E. North-av. 

John McGillen, 967 N. Halsted-st. 

22d. Arnold Tripp, 596 Dearborn-av. 

Edward Muelhoeffer, 112 Clybourn-av. 

23d. John A. Larson, 305 N. Wells-st. . 

William J. Kelly, 168 Oak-st. 

24th. Louis L. Wadsworth, 252 Michigan-st. 

Zara C. Peck, 238 E. Huron. 

25th. Austin O. Sexton, 1457 Wrightwood-av. 

Albert H. Kleinecke, 914 Racine-av. 

26th. Henry N. Lutter, Perry-av. and Wellington-st. 

William Finkler, 843 Perry-av. 

27th. Frederick F. Hanssen, 15 W. Huron-st. 

M. J. Conway, Hermosa. 

28th. Daniel W. Ackerman. 

Thomas Sayle. 

29th. Robert Mulcahy, 4335 Wentworth-av. 

Thomas Carey, 4304 S. Wood-st. 

30th. John F. Kenny, 5205 State-st. 

John W. Utesch, 4836 S. Ashland-av. 

31st. Edwin J. Noble, 6621 Harvard-st. 

James L. Francis, 7757 Shermau-st.. 

32d. James R. Mann, 334 Oakwood-bd. 

William R. Kerr, 5126 Washington-av. 

33d. Cyrus H. Howell, 7828 Edwards-av. 

George H. Shepherd, 9151 Commercial-av. 

34th. John A. Bartine, Roseland. 

John O’Neill, 5900 Wabash-av. 

Sixty-eight Aldermen, $1,700. Average personal property, $26. 

THE MONOPOLIES. 

The Railroads (1892). 

City Railway Co., (1893). 

West Chicago Railway Co., (1893). 

North Chicago Railway Co., (1893). 

Chicago Gas Light and Coke Company. 

Consumers Gas Company. 

People’s Gas Light and Coke Company. 

Hj'de Park Gas Company. 

Lake Gas Company. 

Telephone Company. 


Personal. 

Nothing. 

i( 
i i 
I ( 


$200.00 
Nothing. 

$100.00 

Nothing. 

I < 
l( 


< t 


< ( 
(« 


Nothing. 

«1 
(« 


( i 
Cl 

$100.00 
$200.00 
$ 50.00 
Nothing 

l i 
«( 


$16,698,589 

1,350,000 

1,000,000 

500,000 

700,000 

250,000 

250,000 

5,000 

5.000 

2,100,000 


THE NEWSPAPERS. 


Name. 

Personalty. 

Realty 

Taxes on 


1893- 

1892. 

Realty. 

Record and Daily News. 


$ 8,700 

$ 742 . 

Herald. 


49,800 

4,250 

Tribune. 


35.000 

2,987 

Inter Ocean. 

. 11,000 

76.000 

6,486 

Times. 


7 , 5 oo 


Evening Post... 


25,200 

2,150 

Evening Journal.... 

. 7,000 

12,000 

1,024 

Mail. 

. 2,600 


. 

Dispatch. 



. 

Staats Zeitung... 

.. .... 6,000 

32,400 

2,765 

























































45 « 


If Christ Came to Chicago. 


NAME. 


NEWSPAPER PROPRIETORS—EDITORS. 

Joseph Medill, ioi Cass-st. 

H. H. Kohlsaat, 2978 Prairie-ave. 

Win. Penn Nixon, 743 N. Clark-st .. 
*Carter H. Harrison. 231 Ashlatid-bd.. 

J. W. Scott, 184 Pine-st. 

John R. Walsh, 2133 Calumet-av. 

Victor F. Lawson, 317 La Salle-av.... 
R. W. Patterson, Astor st & Burton-pl. 


cn 

W 

t/i 

« 

o 

W 


MILLIONAIRES AND OTHERS. 

Marshall Field, 1905 Prairie-ave.. .. 
Marshall Field, Jr., 1919 Prairie-av. 

P. D. Armour, 2115 Prairie-av. 

G. M. Pullman, 1729 Prairie-av. 

Potter Palmer, 100 Lake Shore-dr... 

H. N. Higinbotham. 2838 Michigan-av 

J. W. Doane, 1827 Prairie-av. 

Mrs. Wm. Armour, 2017 Prairie-av.... 

*C. H. McCormick, 321 Pluron-st. 

C. T. Yerkes, 3201 Michigan-av. 

Lambert Tree, 94 Cass-st. 

Edward S. Isham, 1 Tower-pl. 

Wm. G. Hibbard, 1701 Prairie-av. 

C. M. Henderson, 1816 Prairie-av. 

T. W. Harvey, 1702 Prairie-av. 

*Frank’n MacVeagh,i03LakeShore-dr 

O. W. Potter. 130 Lake Shore-dr. 

Volney C. Turner, 112 Lake Shore-dr. 

E. W. Blatchford, 375 La Salle-av. 

Lyman J. Gage, 470 N. State-st. 

Henrj' Keith, 3360 Prairie-av. 

W. W. Kimball, 1801 Prairie-av. 

Elbridge G. Keith, 1900 Prairie-av.... 

Edson Keith, 1906 Prairie-av. 

Mrs. C. P. Kellogg, J923 Prairie-av— 

Fernando Jones, 1834 Prairie-av. 

Mrs. H. O. Stone, 2035 Prairie-av. 

S. W. Allerton, 1936 Prairie-av. 

Chas. D. Hamill, 2126 Prairie-av. 

Henry C. Rew, 2619 Prairie-av. 

Noble B. Judah, 2701 Prairie-av.. _ 

Marvin Hughitt, 2828 Prairie-av. 

John G. Shortall, 1600 Prairie-av. 

P. E. Studebaker, 1612 Prairie-av. 

Granger Farwell, 1623 Prairie-av. 

Mrs. Wirt Dexter, 1721 Prairie-av. 

Richard T. Crane, 2541 Michigan-av.. 

Warren Springer, 1635 Prairie-av. 

John Mason Loomis, 55 Lake Shore-dr 

Henry J. Willing, no Rush-st. 

Henry W. Bishop, 167 Rush-st. 

fjohn P. Hopkins, 2813 Calumet-av... 
Hempstead Washburne, 154 Astor-st.. 

Dewitt C. Cregier, 418 Chicago-av. 

*Judge C. C. Kohlsaat, 239 Ashland-av 
Richard Preudergast, 534 Jackson-bd 


<u 

3 

T—< 

C 3 

> 


$200 

60 


50 

20 


$120 
40 


200 

600 

200 

IOO 

IOO 

50 

300 

300 

250 


<u 

J 3 

"rt 

> 


$ 5 °° 

30 


50 


30 


t/j 

o 

z 

< 

(L 


120 

40 

500 


200 


40 

150 


IOO 


40 


60 

250 


300 


IOO 


180 

60 

90 

180 

600 

150 

140 

IOO 

200 

1,000 

300 

250 


60 

60 

,000 


200 


90 

150 


IOO 


(U 

3 

f—1 

a 

> 


$ 100 


25 

100 

50 

100 


180 


150 

125 

100 

150 

50 


1,700 

100 


j 

< 

H 

O 

u, 


u ct *2 

H O M 

c n 


• 

72 ON 

yjco 

<v *-« 


oi 


200 


200 

100 


40 

50 


$ 2,600 
1,500 
300 
300 
300 
1,000 
300 
Nothing. 


20,000 

2,000 

5,000 

12,000 

15,000 

2,000 

10,000 

7 . 5 00 
10,650 

4,000 

2,000 

2,000 

2.500 
3,000 
3,000 

2.500 

1.500 

2.500 
3,300 
1,000 

100 

2.100 
3,000 
4,000 
4,000 
1,200 

1.100 


$11,130 

13,760 


$1,093 

1,174 


30,000 


9,800 


100 


90 


90 

150 


300 


36,000 

51,220 

32,420 


12,500 

42,580 


27,910 

13,450 

18,500 

11.900 
17,680 
16,750 

12,030 

15.900 

20,280 
9,610 


On 


H 

M 

< 

w 

Pi 


2,695 

“836 


3.072 

5,033 

2,767 


1,066 

4,184 


2,742 

1,321 

L 579 

1.015 

1.508 

1.646 

1,182 

1.562 

1.903 

944 


50 


50 

100 


100 


100 

200 

100 

20 

500 


8,000 

41,600 

3,550 

2,250 

7,620 

650 

1,500 

7.500 

640 

300 

3 660 

312 

300 

5,500 

469 

2,000 

5 , 3 oo 

452 

1,500 

Nothing. 

4,050 

345 

3,040 

259 

3,750 

1,350 

id 52 

3,oool 22,900 

i ,954 

Nothing. 

4 , 55 ° 

388 

2,500 

9,980 

980 

2,000 

600 

8,870 

871 

3.420 

336 

150 

500 

2,800 

275 

Nothing. 

1,180 

115 

200 

3,400 

305 

Nothing 

1 1,320 

118 
































































































































Appendices. 


459 


NAME. 


*Judge R. Tuthill, 532 W. Jackson-bl.. 

*Charles H. Case, 201 Ashland-av. 

*Wm. A. Pinkerton, 196 Ashland-av.. 

Mrs. Owsley, 245 Ashland-av. 

*George R. Davis, 692 Washington-bd 

J. B. Hobbs, 343 Da Salle-av. 

Robert Dindblom, 678 Da Salle-av_ 

Malcolm McNeill, 448 Da Salle-av_ 

Harry Rubens, 581 Da Salle-av. 

John DeKoven, 402 Dearborn-av. 

A. A. Munger, 308 E. Ohio-st. 

John M. Smyth, 300 W. Adams-st. 

Peter Schuttler, 289 W. Adams-st. 

Carrie V. Watson, 441 S. Clark-st.... 

Vina Fields, 138 Custom House-pl. 

*J. J. Badenoch, 391 W. Randolph-st.. 

*W. P. Rend, 153 Ashland-av. 

Douis Wolff, 1319 Washington-bd. 

*Daniel W. Mills, 1510 Washington-bd 
JD. Z. Deiter, 4 Tower-pl.. 


t n 

w 

t/1 

05 

O 

Sfl 


v 

a 

73 

> 


tfl 

it « 

5 s 


50 

50 


25 

50 


90 


200 


500 


100 

100 

75 

100 

100 


4 > 
3 

> 


50 

50 


25 

50 


80 

100 


700 


50 

100 

50 

100 

150 


Cfi 

O 

< 

M 

(U 


V 

a 

73 

> 


50 

25 

50 


25 

100 


30 


50 


>-) 

< 

H 

O 

H 


A* C 

Oi o 

t /3 


rO 

eg' 


300 

200 


50 

50 


100 

500 

400 

200 

IOO 

& 

400 

Nothing. 

.950 

Nothing. 

Nothing. 

Nothing. 

4,000 

400 

200 

500 

500 

350 

1,000 


£ ^ 
S 

oi 


9,100 

4.400 

9,000 

2,520 

3.900 


4.140 

2.140 
8,170 
2,100 
4,250 

23,900 

4,300 


% CO 


817 

395 

808 

226 

383 


406 

210 

802 

206 

382 

2,147 

367 


*Returned personal property. 

fin the name of Mary Hopkins. 

jin the name of Joseph Deiter. 

Potter Palmer returns 5 watches, $100; one billiard table, $100; one sewing ma¬ 
chine, $25. 

E. W. Blatchford returns gold and silver worth $300, diamonds worth $400. 

John Mason Doomis returned gold and silver worth $100, diamonds worth $200, 
one sewing machine, $10. 

John DeKoven returned 2 watches worth $100. 

Henry J. Willing returned gold and silver to the amount of J200, and diamonds 
valued at $600. 

Dyman J. Gage has one watch, $100, gold and silver, $100, and diamonds, $100. 




SKYSCRAPERS. 

Equal- 


Per 

Building. 

Assessed. 

ized. 

Taxes. 

Paid by. 

Cent. 

Masonic Temple — 

, $284,700 

$350,181 

$24,299 

Masonic Temple Assoc. 

1-13 

Tacoma Building. 

.. 93,000 

U 4,390 

7,987 

Wirt de Walker. 

1-14 

Unity Building. 

,. 161,800 

199,014 

13,809 

John W. Dachard (Agt). 

1-14 

Auditorium Building 

■ • 305,500 

375,765 

26,074 

Chicago Auditorium Co. 

1-14 

Siegel, Cooper & Co.. 

. 254,000 

312,420 

21,678 

f D. Z. Deiter and Siegel, 
1 Coopei & Co. 

i 1-14 

Monadnock Building 
Palmer House. 

.. 300,500 

368,615 

25,647 

Owen F. Aldis. 

1-14 


THE RICH AND THE POOR. 

The following comparative figures are extracted from 
Times , which has addressed itself to this subject with 
and perseverance : 


the Chicago 
great energy- 


chamber of Commerce Bldg, DaSalle and Wash’gn-sts. 


Actual 

Assessed 

Per 

Value. 

Value. 

Cent. 

$1,200,000 

$ 85,000 

1-14 

1,500,000 

158,000 

1-10 

1,800,000 

153,000 

1-8 

1,800,000 

230,000 

1-8 

2,225,000 

225,000 

I-IO 

































































460 


If Christ Came to Chicago. 


Hartford Building, Madison and Dearborn-sts. 

Rand-McNally Building, Adams and Quincy-sts. 

Rookery Building, LaSalle and Adams-sts. 

Security Building, Fifth-av. and Madison-st. 

Manhattan Building, 307-321 Dearborn-st. 

Monon Building. 320-326 Dearborn-st. 

Edward Morgan’s cottage, 3141 Dearborn-st. 

W. J. Miesler’s store, 587 Sedgwick-st. 

Mathias Boesen’s building, 300 Mohawk-st. 

C. E. Carlstrom’s building, 190 Milton-av. 

Janies McCombie’s store, Twenty-fifth and State-sts_ 

R. W. Lemke’s building, 167 Wells-st. 

P. D. Lynch’s residence, W. 47th and Monroe-sts. 

Fred G. Libke’s shop, 248 Milwaukee-av. 

David Kahn’s store, 114 Chicago-av. 

F. A. Ruck’s store, 273 Wells-st. 

M. McNulty’s residence, 138 Seminary-av. 

C. L. Young’s residence, 613 Melrose-st. 

Robert Berndt’s building. 


Actual 

Assessed 

Per 

Value. 

Value. 

Cent. 

$1,000,000 

$110,000 

1-9 

1,600,000 

160,000 

1-10 

1,600,000 

200,000 

1-8 

750,000 

75. 800 

I-IO 

1,800,000 

90,000 

1-20 

800,000 

37,700 

1-21 

1,700 

527 

1-2 

3 , 5 oo 

1,109 

i -3 

4.500 

1,100 

i -4 

1,600 

400 

i -4 

2,500 

L 743 

3-5 

4,000 

900 

1-4 

2,000 

500 

1-4 

2.200 

1,100 

1-2 

8,000 

2,000 

1-4 

7,200 

1,800 

1-4 

2,000 

517 

1-4 

4,000 

1,600 

2-5 

2,000 

1,050 

1-2 


THE FAIR SELLING VALUE OF COOK COUNTY. 


Statement of property assessed for the year 1892 in Cook County 


Description. 

Horses. 

Cattle. 35,303 

Mules and asses 

Sheep. 1.453 

Hogs... 

Steam engines including boilers 

P'ire and burglar proof safes. 

Billiard, pigeonhole, etc., tables 

Carriages and wagons. 25,068 

Watches and clocks. 5,989 

Sewing and knitting machines.. 4,266 

Pianos. 11,066 

Melodeons and organs. 

Franchises. 

Annuities and royalties ... 

Patent rights . 

Steamboats, sailing vessels 

Materials and manufacturing articles,. .V. ~ i,x 

Manufacturers’ tools, implements and machinery. i’x 

Agricultural tools, implements and machinery 

Gold and silver plate and plated ware. 

Diamonds and jewelry 
Moneys of bank, batik 


No. 

Value. 

37 , 2 i 6 

$ 879,335 

35,303 

241,852 

245 

4,588 

1.453 

7,674 

kill 

563 

156,410 

432 

15,885 

169 

5,074 

25,068 

586,474 

5,989 

28,113 

4,266 

24,326 

11,066 

373,896 

439 

4,510 

10 

50,463 



239 

52,010 


Average. 

$ 23.63 
6-85 

18.73 

1.02 
1.12 
277.82 
36.77 
30.02 
23.40 
4.69 
5-70 
23-79 
10.27 
6.30 
5 04 


217.61 

7,743 

1,838 

61,911 

16,460 

21,000 


cer, broker, etc. 1,097,755 

8,200 


Moneys 1 

Credits of bank, broker, etc 

Moneys of other than banker, etc. 970,129 

Credits of other than banker, etc. 123,605 

Bonds and stocks. 

Shares of capital stock of companies not of this State 
Pawnbroker’s property 


6,670 

500 

5,350 


Property of corporations not before enumerated. 1 776 2I -j 

Bridge property. ’ ’ 7I q 

Property of saloons and eating houses. 15,625 


Household and office furniture.. 3,090,975 


Investments in real estate and improvements thereon. 
Grain of all kinds. 


14,845 

__ 2,625 

Shares of stock of State and National banks. c qo -» cc 0 

All other property.. . W.* $£123 

Total value of unenumerated property. 27,974 158 

Total value of personal property.30*407,189 

































































Appendices. 


461 


Real estate—lands 

Number Average Value 

of Acres. Value. per Acre. 


improved.362,729 $7,777,776 $21.44 

Unimproved. 97,040 6,702,363 69.07 


REAL ESTATE—TOWN AND CITY LOTS. 


NO. Of 


Description. Dots. 

Improved town and city lots.167,094 

Unimproved lots.470,822 


Value. 

$126,394,249 

31,052,151 


Average 

Value. 

$ 756.43 

66.00 


Appendix D. 

THE FEDERATION OF MINISTERS OF RELIGION. 

The Executive Committee of the Federation of the Ministers of 
Religion in Chicago is one of the many signs indicating a desire on 
the part of the ministers to exercise a more effective influence upon 
the affairs of the city by means of co-operative action. The question 
as to whether or not the Ministers of Religion could come together as 
a body had been discussed, but it was not until the nth of December 
that any actual step was taken towards bringing the subject to a test. 
On that day I summoned a conference in the Willard Hall for the pur¬ 
pose, which was defined as follows : “To take counsel as to the best 
means of convincing the masses that the Church of God is the agency 
which can best help them to redress their grievances and realize their 
aspirations for a better social condition.” A copy of the circular sum¬ 
moning the conference was sent to every minister of religion desig¬ 
nated as such in the Chicago directory. The conference thus sum¬ 
moned was influentially attended, and after a meeting lasting about 
two hours, it was resolved to form a committee representing the 
churches of all denominations to convey the greetings of the Ministers 
of Religion to the American Federation of Labor, which was then 
meeting in Chicago. The same committee was also instructed to at¬ 
tend the conference summoned by the American Federation to discuss 
the question of the relief of the unemployed. This committee was to 
report to the adjourned conference which was held a week later. The 
representatives named by the conference attended the Federation of 
Labor and expressed their hearty sympathy with the object of the la¬ 
bor unions. They were very courteously received by the President, 
and there was a feeling on both sides that the visit was timely and 
useful. The committee also attended the conference summoned by 
the Civic Federation, at which the Central Relief Association was 
founded. 

On December 18, the adjourned conference met in order to discuss 
the question as to how the Church of God in Chicago could best be 
organized as a unit for the relief of the poor and for the realization in 
Chicago of the prayer: “Thy will be done on earth as it is in 
Heaven.” Accompanying the circular summoning the conference 
there was appended a schedule of information which it was suggested 
would facilitate the work of the conference if it were filled in by each 
minister of religion. 







462 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

As a number of inquiries have been made as to this schedule, it may 
be well to reprint it here. 

Ward No.... Precinct No_ 

If the Church of Chicago were Organized as a Unit. 

I would undertake to be responsible in the name of my church and congrega¬ 
tion for the district lying between.on the north, and.on the south, 

and between.on the east, and.on the west. 

Estimated population.; of above_are church goers, and_non-English 

speaking. 

Our church building seats.. . .persons, and is occupied_days in the week. We 

have_rooms available for social or civic service, seating_persons. Of these.... 

are occupied_days in the week. 

We have....enrolled members of above.are engaged more or less actively 

in church work. In the Sunday School_children are on the books and_teach¬ 
ers, with an average attendance of. 

In connection with our church we have the following branches of social work 
in progress: 

Temperance. 

Purity. 

Economics. 

Civic Duties. 

Education. 

Philanthropy.. 

Music.. 

Sanitation. 

Recreation. 

The capital invested in our church buildings, etc.. is about...Dollars 

and we raise annually for all purposes.Dollars. 

In the district for which my church is responsible, the following are among the 
influences detrimental to the social welfare: We have.... places of business open on 
Sunday, which deprive_employes of their weekly rest from labor. 

We have_saloons and houses for the sale of intoxicants. Of these_are of 

average character.are bad, and_are very bad. 

We have_notorious houses of ill fame, containing_inmates. There are_ 

massage houses with_inmates, and_other resorts maintained for purposes of 

immorality. 

We have_gaming houses and_resorts of betting men. 

We have_sweating shops, or factories, where_men.women and... chil¬ 

dren work in conditions of labor which render it impossible for them to be either 
happy, healthy or human. 

Among the agencies of service in the district in all of which my church is more 
or less actively interested are the following : 

Police station with_policemen,_schools with_scholars.school attend¬ 
ance officers and_teachers,_playgrounds for children.covered playrooms, 

_Happy Evenings Associations,_gymnasia_Recreative Evenings Associa¬ 
tions for youths,_technical classes, ... .cooking classes,_university extension 

lectures.public reading room,_people’s institutes,_temperance saloons, 

_drinking fountains.temperance societies,_night refuges,_good lodg¬ 
ing houses.labor registries,_labor unions’ offices,_thrift agencies.relief 

agencies,_maternity homes,_homes for deserted children,_societies for 

crippled and blind,_hospitals,_convalescent homes.sick nurses.visitors 

of sick.fresh air fund,_flower mission,_early closing associations,_Sun¬ 
day rest associations,_societies for prevention of cruelty to animals. 

(Signed).Minister. 

Address.. 

Of the.Church 

Address. 


DENOMINATION. 

The attempt was nearly shipwrecked by objections taken to the ad¬ 
mission of Catholics, Jews and Unitarians. Were they Ministers of 
Religion? What was Religion? I answered, “Pure religion and unde- 
filed before our God and Father is this, to visit the fatherless and 
widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the 
world. ” 































Appendices. 463 

The objectors collapsed, and after a somewhat desultory discussion 
a committee of organization was appointed with instructions to meet 
as soon as possible and to report what should be done, both in 
relation to the relief of the poor, and for the effective realization of' 
the force of the Church of God in the cause of righteousness. This 
committee decided to put itself in communication with the Re¬ 
lief Association, and to undertake what could be done in the way of 
districting the city, and organizing a house to house visitation which 
was necessitated by existing distress. They further determined to con¬ 
stitute an Executive Committee which would represent all denomina¬ 
tions, including the Catholics and the Jews, for the purpose of carry¬ 
ing out the rest of the programme. This Executive Committee, which 
met for the first time on January 15, had before it the question of 
securing one day’s rest in seven for the Retail Clerks. Mr. O’Brien of 
the Retail Clerks’ Association attended and made a statement, calling 
attention to the extent to which the action of three individuals in the 
various districts of the town impeded the closing of stores in the even¬ 
ing, and also made a statement as to the reasons which induced the 
Retail Clerks to appeal to the City Council for the purpose of securing 
legal protection for one day’s rest in seven. The Rev. Jenkin Lloyd 
Jones was appointed to see the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, 
to which the ordinance had been referred by the Council. On January 
22, the committee met and passed a resolution assuring Mayor Hop¬ 
kins of the support of the churches if his administration would keep 
the gaming houses closed. On January 29, it was decided to hold a 
conference at some future date at the Willard Hall, for the purpose of 
uniting all the churches in the campaign for honesty and pure gov¬ 
ernment at the aldermanic elections. 

The Executive Committee represents all the churches, as will be seen 
from the following list: 

Baptist—Rev. O. P. Gifford, D. D., 4543 Greenwood Avenue. 

Independent—Prof. David Swing, D. D., 66 Lake Shore Drive. 

Jewish—Rabbi Emil G. Hirsch, D. D., 3612 Grand Boulevard. 

Reformed Episcopal—Bishop Samuel Fallows, D. D., 967 West 
Monroe Street. 

Unitarian—Rev. Jenkin Lloyd Jones, D. D., 3939 Langley Avenue. 

Episcopal—Rev. Floyd Tomkins, D. D., 310 Superior St. 

Methodist—Rev. Arthur Edwards, D. D., 57 Washington Street. 

Rev. R. S. Martin, D. D., 142 Locust Street. 

Prof. A. W. Small, Ph. D., Chicago University. 

Prof. Graham Taylor, D. D., West Side Theological Seminary. 

Lutheran—Prof. R. F. Weidner, D. D., 1311 Sheffield Avenue. 

Presbyterian—Rev. J. G. Inglis, D. D., 6518 Woodlawn Park. 

Congregational—Rev. J. G. Johnson, D. D., 7 Ritchie Place. 

Rev. R. A. Torrey, D. D., Moody’s Bible Institute. 

Presbyterian—Rev. Thomas C. Hall, D. D., 425 North State Street. 

Wm. A. Burch, Secretary, Argyle Park 

But before long it is hoped that a Catholic priest may be found who 
will be willing to serve side by side with his brethren outside the 
Roman fire in the interest of the city. 

It was not intended to have any elaborate organization but it was 
proposed that the committee should meet fortnightly and on occasion 


464 If Christ Came to Chicago . 

when questions arose of sufficient importance they would summon all 
the Ministers of Religion in Chicago to a conference to concert action 
and to consider what should be done. 

The task of organizing the ministers of religion as a whole has 
been made in several towns in the United Kingdom and has been par¬ 
tially successful in some towns in the United States. One of the earli¬ 
est efforts made in the United Kingdom was made at Newcastle-on- 
Tyne and in Liverpool, where representative conferences were called 
consisting of representatives of all the churches for purposes of dis¬ 
cussing such questions as gambling, the social evil, drunkenness, the 
treatment of the poor and so forth. In England the concerted action 
of ministers of religion has been for the most part upon less broad 
lines than those laid down in Chicago. In Bradford, Birmingham, 
Halifax and Leeds, and other similar towns where the ministers have 
met together and have undertaken a house to house visitation for the 
purpose of making a census of church attendants and a list of all chil¬ 
dren of school age in the Sunday Schools, there has been an attempt 
to exclude the Unitarians and neither the Catholics nor the Episco¬ 
palians have taken part in the work. It is thought possible that in 
Chicago where the differences are not so marked as in the Old World 
ministers of all religions and all creeds may unite in common 
effort in order to survey the city as a whole from the point of view 
of the Church of God in order to ascertain what districts remain 
to be occupied and what work there is which they can better under¬ 
take collectively than otherwise. 

The questions raised at the Central Music Hall meeting seem to 
have made a deep impression upon one of the papers, where it least 
might have been expected. The Chicago Mail ever since the Music 
Hall meetings has been publishing articles more or less avowedly sug¬ 
gested by the discussion on that occasion. Its first series was in refer¬ 
ence to the vices of the city to which reference has been made in the 
text of this book. The second was an attempt to ascertain the amount 
of capital locked up in church buildings in Chicago, the number of 
church members and the total annual revenue raised by them from all 
sources. The Mail set out with a thesis of its own to prove, its object 
being to impress upon the minds of the public that the millions sunk 
in church property were more or less wasted and that the amount 
spent in running the churches of Chicago was far in excess of what was 
justifiable considering the hardship of the times and the ideal poverty 
of primitive Christianity. Suppose, said the Mail , with all reverence 
and love, the Man of Nazareth were to come to Chicago to-day and 
survey the work of the churches, what would He think of it all ? The 
leaven seems to be working although in strange places. We may not 
agree with all the answers made to the question but the fact that it is 
being asked on all sides is a hopeful sign for the future spiritual and 
social life of Chicago. 

The following is a table summarizing the results of the Mail's un¬ 
critical inquiry : 


Appendices. 


465 


DENOMINATIONS. 


Congregational. 

Methodist Episcopal 

Presbyterian. 

Episcopal . 

Baptist. 

Universalist. 

Unitarian. 

Jewish. 

Reformed Episcopal 

Lutheran . 

Outside Lutheran .. . 
Roman Catholic. 

Total. 


1 Number of 

Members. 

Church 

Expenses. 

Missions, etc. 

Value of 

Property. 

10,890 

$103,328 

$168,623 

$1,069,500 

15.703 

170.824 

38,205 

2,378,600 

12,941 

267,637 

107,071 

1,910,000 

23.247 

357.907 

47,351 

3,000,000 

12,228 

178,072 

4 L 97 I 

1,233,000 

900 

39 200 

1,750 

256,000 

1,200 

34,000 

2,000 

485,000 

1,115 

82,000 

49.700 

435,000 

1,108 

23,530 

9,364 

231.000 

58,000 

188,500 


1,550,000 

50,000 

85,000 


1,000,000 

500,000 

635-90° 


9,220,000 

687.341 

12,055,897 

$466,035 

$22,679,100 


Appendix E. 

THE CIVIC FEDERATION OF CHICAGO. 

At the Conference which I held in Central Music Hall in November, 
1893, I had an opportunity of setting forth the idea of a Civic Church 
or Federation of all good citizens, in the hearing of a large and rep¬ 
resentative audience. After some discussion it was unanimously de¬ 
cided to choose a committee of nominators who should call together a 
representative committee of leading citizens for the purpose of discuss¬ 
ing the question with a view to action. That committee was chosen 
and in due course of time it evolved the body known as the Civic Fed¬ 
eration of Chicago. 

The following is the Chronology of the foundation of the Civic 
Federation of Chicago, the text of the Constitution and the names of 
the members and officers : 

Nov. 12, 1893.—Formation of Civic Federation suggested and approved 
at meeting at Central Music Hall and committee of 
nominators of a temporary committee of inquiry ap¬ 
pointed : Mr. T. W. Harvey (Business), Miss Addams 
(Philanthropy), Rev. Dr. Thomas (Religion), Profes¬ 
sor Bemis (Education), and Mr. O’Brien (Labor.) 

Nov. 17. —The following was the form of notice sent out by T. W. 

Harvey, as the Chairman of the Committee of Nom¬ 
ination, to those nominated to serve on the Joint 
Executive Committee: 

The committee named at the Central Music Hall meeting Sunday night to ap¬ 
point an Executive Committee to take in charge the establishment of the proposed 
Civic Federation in this city, begs leave to inform you of your appointment as a 
member of the committee. 

The object of this organization briefly and in general terms, is the concentra¬ 
tion into one potential, non-political, non-sectarian center all the forces that are 
now laboring to advance our municipal, philanthropic, industrial and religious 
interests, and to accomplish all that is possible towards energizing and giving 
effect to the public conscience of Chicago 

































466 


If Christ Came to Chicago. 


It is not expected to accomplish all this in one day, but all great movements 
must have a beginning, and a consultation with a great many of our leading citi¬ 
zens of all classes who desire to see Chicago one of the best governed, the healthiest 
and cleanest city in this country, leads us to believe that now is the time to begin. 
Especially do we believe it opportune that such a movement should begin while 
our people are yet filled with the new ideas, new ambitions and inspirations draw.n 
from the great Exposition and its most valuable adjunct, the World’s Congresses. 
An early acceptance of this appointment is earnestly desired. 

Dec. —Committee nominates a provisional committee. 

First meeting at the Palmer House. 

Conference summoned on the condition of unem¬ 
ployed. 

Central Relief Association formed. 

Jan. —Committee appointed on organization, Judge Collins, 

Dr. Hirsch, Prof. Small and Mr. Easley. 

Feb. 3, 1894.—Civic Federation incorporated at Springfield. 


INCORPORATORS. 

T. W. Harvey, J. J. McGrath, 

A. C. Bartlett, Ada C. Sweet, 

Bertha H. Palmer, Emil G. Hirsch, 

James W. Scott, L. C. Collins, 

Sarah HackettStevenson, F. MacVeagh, 

CONSTITUTION. 


Lyman J. Gage, 
M. J. Carroll, 

O. P. Gifford, 
Jane Addams, 
W. P. Nixon. 


The text of the Constitution of the Federation is as follows : 

Name—This corporation shall be called The Civic Federation of Chicago. 

Purpose—The purpose of this Federation shall be : 

x. The concentration into one potential, non-political, non-sectarian center of 
all the forces that are now laboring to advance our municipal, philanthropic, in¬ 
dustrial and moral interests, and to accomplish all that is possible towards energiz¬ 
ing and giving effect to the public conscience of Chicago. 

2. To serve as a medium of acquaintance and sympathy between persons who 
reside in the different parts of the city, who pursue different vocations, who are by 
birth of different nationalities, who profess different creeds or no creed, who for 
any of these reasons are unknown to each other, who nevertheless have similar 
interests in the well being of Chicago and who agree in the wish to promote every 
kind of municipal welfare. 

3. To place municipal administration on a purely business basis, by securing 
the utmost practicable separation of municipal issues from state ana national 
politics. 

Methods—The means employed by the Federation will be investigation, publica¬ 
tion, agitation and organization, together with the exercise of every moral in¬ 
fluence needed to carry into effect the purpose of the Federation. 

MANAGEMENT OF THE FEDERATION. 

Management—There shall be a central council, consisting of one hundred mem¬ 
bers, the Mayor of Chicago being ex-officio a member. The incorporators shall 
constitute the council until the first annual meeting. At the first annual meeting 
the incorporators shall appoint ninety-nine councilors, to be divided by lot into 
three equal groups, the same to hold office for one. two and three years respec¬ 
tively. At each subsequent annual meeting the vacancies in the council, occasioned 
by the expiration of terms of office, shall be filled by vote of the remaining council. 

The membership of the central council may be increased by the addition of one 
delegate from each ward organization. As soon as practicable, branch ward 
organizations shall be formed, and each of these branches may elect annually a 
representative to the council, to serve one year. The council shall elect annually 
from its own members the board of trustees, to consist of a president, two vice- 
presidents, a secretary, a treasurer, a legal adviser, a general organizer and eight 
other members. The Board of Trustees shall also be the executive committee of 
the council. The officers of the Board of Trustees shall be the officers of the council. 
They shall hold office for one year, or until their successors have qualified. 


Appendices. 


467 


DIVISIONS INTO DEPARTMENTS. 

Departments—The work of the Federation shall be divided into the following 
departments: 

Municipal. 

Philanthropic. 

Industrial. 

Educational and Social. 

Moral Reform. 

Departments maybe subdivided as the council may from time to time determine. 

Amendments—The purpose and methods herein indicated may be modified or 
extended, as occasion may demand, by a two-thirds vote of those present at any 
regularly called meeting of the council. 

Branch Organization—Twenty-five or more citizens, who are residents of a ward 
in which there is no branch organization, may at any time form a branch of the 
Federation. No organization shall be deemed a ward branch of the Federation 
until it has been recognized as such by the council. Said council shall always have 
power to pass upon the regularity and good faith of any ward organization, and 
upon the qualifications of any person claiming to represent, or be a candidate of, 
or a delegate from such an organization. There shall not be more than one ward 
organization in any ward, but there may be as many precinct councils as the ward 
may deem expedient to authorize in its respective precincts. 

Feb. 5, 1894.—First meeting of the council at the Palmer House. 

Feb. 15. —Meeting of Council at Commerce Club to elect officers. 

OFFICERS. 

President—Lyman J. Gage. 

First Vice-President—Mrs. Potter Palmer. 

Second Vice-President—-J. J. McGrath. 

Secretary—R. M. Easley. 

Treasurer—E. S. Dreyer. 

Trustees—J. J. Linehan, M. J. Carroll, T. W. Harvey, L. C. Collins, 
Jane Addams, Ada C. Sweet, Dr. Sarah Hackett Stevenson, Franklin 
MacVeagh, G. E. Adams, E. B. Butler. 

In the absence of President Lyman J. Gage Mrs. Potter Palmer, 
First Vice-President of the Civic Federation, called a meeting of the 
trustees on February 20, at the Palmer House, to appoint the standing 
committees required by the by-laws of the Federation : 

Political—L. C. Collins, John J. McGrath, E. S. Dreyer, John F. 
Scanlan, George E. Adams, J. W. Ela, Victor F. Lawson, Franklin Mac¬ 
Veagh, R. W. Patterson, Jr., Wm. Penn Nixon, Carter Harrison, Slason 
Thompson, J. W. Scott, A. C. Hesing. The seven representatives of the 
press in the Federation will also be asked to co-operate with all the 
department committees. 

Ways and Means—T. W. Harvey, Arthur Ryerson, George E. Adams, 
Wm. Penn Nixon, E. S. Dreyer, Z. S. Holbrook, A. C. Honore, E. B. 
Butler, J. Irving Pearce. 

Municipal— Professor John Gray, W. A. Giles, W. J. Onahan, Mar¬ 
shall Field, Professor E. W. Bemis, M. J. Carroll, Ada C. Sweet, Mrs. 
H. W. Duncanson, J. W. Ela. 

Industrial—James J. Linehan, M. H. Madden, August Jacobson, Mrs. 
Potter Palmer, Mrs. Charles Henrotin, W. J. Niestadt, P A rank Sweeney, 
Jane Addams, Dr. H. W. Thomas. 

Philanthropic—Mrs. J. M. Flower, T. W. Harvey, Professor Albion 
W. Small, Professor Graham Taylor, J. J. Ryan, Mrs. W. J. Chalmers, 
H. N. Higinbotham, Dr. Sarah H. Stevenson, C. S. H. Mixer. 

Morals—Rev. O. P. Gifford, Edwin D. Wlieelock, Cyrus H. McCor¬ 
mick, L. T. O’Brien, H. H. Van Meter, Rev. Frank M. Bristol, Rev. 
M. C.’ Ranseen, Rev. Floyd Tomkins, Dr. Arthur Edwards. 


468 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

Educational and Social—Mrs. H. M. Wilmarth, Mrs. Marion E. 
Washburn, John McLaren, Emil G. Hirsch, William C. Ames, M. R. 
Grady, G. Fred Rush, Professor Bamberger, Bishop Fallows. 

By vote Mrs. Palmer was requested to call a special meeting of the 
general council of one hundred for Tuesday evening, February 27, to 
receive the recommendation of the committee on political action, and 
to decide how the Federation can be the most effective in the coming 
campaign. 

LIST OF MEMBERS OF THE FEDERATION UP TO FEBRUARY. 

Geo. R. Peck.611 Monadnock. 

Frank Sweeney...*..Commerce Building. 

John J. McGrath, Pres’t Trades Assembly.394 South Paulina Street. 

T. T. O’Brien.214 Washington Boulevard. 

M. J. Carroll... 148 Monroe Street. 

T. J. Griffin.177 North Tawndale Avenue. 

P'rank Kidd.185 Barclay Street. 

M. H. Madden, Pres’t State Fed. of Tabor .86 Eda Street. 

Dr. Sarah Hackett Stevenson.322 North State Street. 

Mrs. Marion Foster Washburn.555 West Jackson Street. 

T. W. Harvey.825 Rookery. 

Tyman J. Gage.First National Bank. 

J. Irving Pearce.Proprietor Sherman House. 

Franklin MacVeagh.Take and Wabash Avenue. 

Rev. E. G. Hirsch.3612 Grand Boulevard. 

Rev. O. P. Gifford.4543 Greenwood Avenue. 

Mrs. W. J. Chalmers.234 Ashland Bonlevard. 

Bishop Fallows.967 West Monroe Street. 

Rev. Jenkin Tloyd Jones...3939 Tangley Avenue. 

W. J. Niestadt.14 Tell Place. 

Rev. Dr. Thomas.536 West Monroe Street. 

Prof. Edward. W. Bemis.Chicago University. 

Prof. Albion Small.Chicago University. 

R. M. Easley.Inter Ocean. 

J. W. Scott.Chicago Herald. 

Melville E. Stone.Globe National Bank. 

Dr. Bayard Holmes.36 Washington Street, Room 914. 

A. C. Hesing.Pres’t Staats Zeitung Co. 

Prof. R. D. Sheppard.Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill. 

Prof. Graham Taylor.Chicago Theological Seminary. 

Mrs. J. M. Flower.Ontario House. 

Mrs. Potter Palmer.100 Take Shore Drive. 

Mrs. Charles Henrotin.Walton Flats, Walton Place. 

Miss Ada Sweet.175 Dearborn Street, Room 82. 

Miss Jane Addams.335 South Halsted Street. 

John J. Mitchell.Illinois Trust and Savings Bank. 

Rev. P. J. Muldoon.311 Superior Street. 

Wm. Penn Nixon.Inter Ocean. 

Mrs. Henry Wade Rogers.Evanston, Ill. 

C. S. H. Mixer.Woodruff Hotel. 

A. C. Bartlett.32 Take Street. 

Prof. Gray.Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill. 

Judge T. C. Collins.Rookery. 

Azel F. Hatch.Title and Trust Bdg., 100 Washington St. 

Wm. Crear.263 South Washtenaw Avenue. 

J. J. Ryan, Pres’t Building Trades Council. 199 Randolph Street. 

M. R. Grady.478 Marshfield Avenue. 

John Anderson.185 North Peoria Street. 

T. W. Kadlec.179 West 12th Street. 

Tloyd G. Wheeler.119 Dearborn Street. 

Mr. Barnett.184 Dearborn Street. 

Edwin D. Wheelock.99 Washington Street. 

W. H. Tatge.79 Dearborn Street, Room 644. 

Charles J. Holmes.91 Dearborn Street, Room 601. 

Rev. M. C. Ranseen.B79 West Huron Street. 

Rev. T. F. Cashman.658 West Jackson Street. 

Rev. E. D. Kelly.West 12th Street, corner May Street. 
























































Appendices. 


469 


E. F. Rennacker. 

Mrs. H. M. Wilmarth. 

C. A. Mair. 

Mrs. G. W. Huddleston .., 
Mrs. Celia Parker Wooley 
Mrs. Henry L. Frank.. .. 

Mrs. Henry Solomon. 

Mrs. H. W. Duncanson .. 
Miss Hattie A. Shinn.... 

W. J. Onahan. 

John F. Scanlan. 

Z. S. Holbrook. 

E. B. Butler. 

John H. Hamline. 

Wm. Vocke.. 

Luther L. Mills. 

John W. Ela. 

Dr. W. R. Harper. 

Henry Wade Rogers. 

O. S. A. Sprague. 

Chas. L. Raymond. 

H. N. Higinbotham. 

A. C. Honore. 

Prof. Bamberger. 

C. U. Gordon. 

Arthur Ryerson. 

Rev. J. H. Barrows. 

Rev. F. W. Gunsaulus. 

Rev. Frank Bristol. 

Rev. Floyd Tomkins. 

Dr. Arthur Edwards. 

Augustus Jacobson. 

Geo. E. Adams. 

E. S. Dreyer. 

Willis G. Jackson. 

F. M. Atwood.. 

A. H. Revell. 

John McLaren. 

Cyrus H. McCormick, Jr.. 

Marshall Field. 

Phillip Henrici. 

H. H. Van Meter. 

Wm. C. Hollister. 


. 185 West Madison Street. 

.Auditorium Annex. 

.169 Jackson Street, Room 212. 

.903 West Adams Street. 

.Geneva, Ill. 

. 1608 Prairie Avenue. 

. 4060 Lake Avenue. 

.190 Warren Avenue. 

. 115 Monroe Street. 

.37 Macalister Place. 

. Postoffice Building. 

.475 Dearborn Avenue. 

. 230 Adams Street. 

.The Temple, Room 500. 

.520 LaSalle Avenue. 

122 LaSalle Street. 

.1331 Unity Building. 

. University of Chicago. 

.Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill. 
. 2700 Prairie Avenue. 

.2239 Calumet Avenue. 

.29th Street and Michigan Avenue. 

.2103 Michigan Avenue. 

.Jewish Manual Training School. 

115 Dearborn Street. 

.59 Bellevue Place. 

.2957 Indiana Avenue. 

. Armour Avenue and 33d Street. 
Evanston, Ill. 

.310 Superior Street. 

.2816 Indiana Avenue. 

1416—100 Washington Street. 

The Temple, Room 914. 

.99 Dearborn Street. 

.59 Dearborn Street, Rootu 403. 

.Clark, N. W. Corner Madison Street. 
Wabash Avenue. 

2 Franklin Street. 

329 Wabash Avenue. 

Washington Street & Wabash Avenue. 
175 Madison Street. 

.21 Groveland Park. 

. 148 Monroe Street. 


The Federation was organized in accordance with ideas of leading 
citizens irrespective of party. Considerable difference of opinion pre¬ 
vailed as to the best method of constituting such an organization, but 
the principle of Tammany Hall ultimately prevailed. That principle 
is organization from above downwards instead of what naturally seems 
to an Englishman the natural organization from the bottom upwards. 

Tammany Hall, however, is undoubtedly an organization distinctly 
American. It has at least vindicated its capacity to survive and it is 
probably, notwithstanding some temporary reverses, one of the most 
powerful political organizations in the United States. 

Down the levee on Clark Street there is to be found a saloon keeper 
who for twenty years was a Tammany captain in New York. He keeps 
a saloon and a house of ill fame in Chicago, but he still keeps up his 
connection in New York, where he is the proprietor of a house of ill- 
fame, which will entitle him, no doubt, should he return to the East, 
to resume his political captaincy in the ranks under the com¬ 
mand of Boss Croker. I saw him the night after Dr. Parkhurst had 
scored his first great success over the politicians of New York. The 
ex-Tammany Captain shook his head when I asked him what he 













































470 


If Christ Came to Chicago. 

thought of Dr. Parkhurst’s campaign. He had no use for Dr. Park- 
hurst. For a time, he thought, he might advertise himself, which was 
no doubt his object, but after that everything would go on as before. 
The one permanent institution in New York was Tammany. 

I asked him to explain its secret. “Suppose,” said I, “that I am a 
newly arrived citizen in your precinct, and come to you and wish to 
join Tammany, what would be required of me? ” 

“Sir,” said he, “before anything would be required of you we would 
find out all about you. I would size you up myself and then after I 
had formed my own judgment I would seud two or three trusty men 
to find out all about you. Find out, for instance, whether you really 
meant to work and serve Tammany or whether you were only getting 
in to find out all about it. If the inquiries were satisfactory then you 
would be admitted to the ranks of Tammany and would stand in with 
the rest.” 

“ What should I have to do?” 

“Your first duty,” said he, “would be to vote the Tammany ticket 
whenever an election was on, and then to hustle around and make 
every other person whom you could get hold of vote the same ticket.” 

“ And what would I get for my trouble ? ” I asked. 

“Nothing,” said he, “unless you needed it. I was twenty years 
captain and I never got anything for myself, but if you needed any¬ 
thing you would get whatever was going. It might be a job that would 
give you employment under the city, it might be a pull that you might 
have with the aldermen in case you got into trouble, whatever it was 
you would be entitled to your share. If you get into trouble, Tam¬ 
many will help you out. If you are out of a job Tammany will see 
that you have tlie^ first chance at whatever is going. It is a great 
power, is Tammany. Whether it is with the police, or in the court or 
in the City Hall you will find Tammany men everywhere and they 
will stick together. There is nothing sticks so tight as Tammany.” 

Therein, no doubt, this worthy ex captain revealed the secret of 
Tammany’s success. Tammany is a brotherhood. Tammany men 
Stick together, and help each other. 

Their members may be corrupt, their methods indefensible, but the 
question for Chicago is whether or not the Civic Federation can organ¬ 
ize a brotherhood that will work as hard to make Chicago the ideal 
city of the world as Tammany has been successful in organizing a 
party which practically holds New York in the hollow of its hand. In 
other words, are there as many men and women in Chicago who will 
work as hard for the Kingdom of the Lord in Chicago as there are men 
who will work for the rule of Tammany in New York ? 

Tammany has not only organization; it has spoils and power. Power 
the City Federation may have and will have if its operations are di¬ 
rected with energy and discretion, but there are no spoils. Still, if 
anything is to be done in practical politics the sinews of war must not 
be wanting. Many of the members of the Federation are wealthy 
enough to meet the running expenses of such an organization. But 
if the Federation is to root itself deeply in every ward in the city it 
will have to democratize its finances. 

There are many persons who wish well to the work of political and 
social reform in the city who cannot render much active service, but 


Appendices. 471 

who would be able and willing to contribute say a dime a week for the 
coming of the Kingdom. If there are 10,000 men and women in Chi¬ 
cago who are sufficiently in earnest about the regeneration of the city 
to subscribe the cost of a cigar a week for the attainment of their 
ideal the war chest of the Civic Federation would be able to command 
$50,000 a year. With that sum a great deal might be done. 


Appendix F. 

WHAT THE LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL HAS DONE 
FOR LABOR. 

The following brief outline of the way in which the labor unions 
of London have used the London City Council for the purpose of im¬ 
proving the condition of the wage-earners may not be without interest 
to the unionists of Chicago. By means of a hearty working alliance 
with the non-conformist churches and the temperance and other so¬ 
cieties, the trades unions of London succeeded in 1889 in electing a 
majority of representatives on the Council, pledged to do what they 
could to improve the condition of labor in London. John Burns, the 
engineer, who was the hero of the great dock strike, was elected as a 
representative of labor to the Council, and from the first sittings his 
genius, his eloquence and business capacity, his absolute honesty 
and transparent sincerity, made him one of the most influential mem¬ 
bers. The labor policy of the London Council was largely dictated 
by him, and it has become a model for the most democratic municipal¬ 
ities in the kingdom. 

The following is a brief summary of what the London County 
Council, under the leadership of John Burns, has succeeding in doing 
for labor: 

“ Fair” wages established in all cases. 

Sub-letting and sub-contracting abolished except for work that contractors could 
not do in ordinary manner. 

Practical clerk of works employed in each case where work of any trade is un¬ 
dertaken. 

A maximum week of fifty-four hours established. 

No man to work more than six days. 

Where continuous working goes on, and two twelve-hour shifts were the rule, 
three shifts of eight hours are now observed. 

Overtime abolished, 

Contract labor abolished. 

In works of maintenance connected with parks, bridges, highways, all classes 
of men—such as painters, laborers, engineers, scavengers, carpenters, etc.—em¬ 
ployed direct. 

Firemen, extra holidays. 

Pensions are now granted to all retiring employes instead of as 
formerly only to the higher officials. The wages of the employes of 
the Council have been raised by $250,000 a year. 

All the foregoing relates to what the Council has done when it di¬ 
rectly employs labor. The police force in London is not under the 
control of the Council. Neither are the school teachers; they are 
controlled by a School Board, not by the Council. None of the em¬ 
ployes of the London Council are engaged for political reasons, nor 
are any dismissed on account of politics. But, not reckoning the 
police and the teachers, the London Council is one of the largest em- 



472 If Christ Came to Chicago. 

ployers of labor in the kingdom. It sets an example in insisting upon 
human conditions of service for its workmen and in doing so has done 
an incalculable amount of good. 

But, great as this is, it is less far-reaching than the action which 
the Council took in deciding that no contracts shall be let to contrac¬ 
tors who keep sweat shops or refuse to concede to their workmen the 
union rates of wages and hours of labor. This step was taken in 1889 
when the following resolution was passed which struck at the root of 
the system which had previously prevailed of accepting the lowest 
tender without any regard to the conditions which the contractors ex¬ 
acted from their workmen: 

That the Council shall require from any persons formally tendering for any con¬ 
tract to the Council a declaration that they will pay such rate of wages and observe 
such hours of labor as are generall}' accepted as fair in their trade, and in the 
event of any charges to the contrary being established against them, the tender 
should not be accepted. 

Mr. H. M. Massingham, one of the ablest of English journalists, 
writing in the Daily Chronicle upon this charter of London labor, 
says : 

Here, then, was a direct blow at the sweating system, at which the pulpit, the 
press, and politicians had been hammering blows for half a century without ever 
substantially impairing its direful sway. In other words, the great moral problem 
of the treatment of labor was placed in the hands of the workmen’s organizations 
as the only bodies capable of guaranteeing a righteous system. The Council’s res¬ 
olution has been carried out with unflinching sternness, and its result has been to 
mitigate in favor of the workers of London the whole system of accepting the 
lowest tender. Under it the employer who cuts his estimate for public work in the 
hope of sweating his profit out of ill-paid and ill-organized labor finds to-day his 
occupation gone. Linked with this reform was another of equal importance. The 
Council decided that it would be impossible to allow the contractor to slip out of 
his engagements to his workmen by letting out his business to another man. 
They therefore decided to forbid sub-letting and sub-contracting, save in those 
cases where work lay outside the ordinary scope of the contractor’s trade. This 
regulation has not only been laid down, but enforced; and one fine of ^500 was in¬ 
flicted as a warning, which it has not been found necessary to repeat. The petty 
sweating jobmaster has thus been eliminated, for the good of every creature ex¬ 
cept himself. 

In other directions the same beneficent spirit is manifested. It 
has established bands in the parks, laid out and beautified hundreds 
of acres of common lands, has made playgrounds for children and has 
enormously raised the standard of the music hall entertainments in 
London. It has established a municipal lodging house for single 
men, and is steadily working to acquire possession of the street rail¬ 
ways, the water and gas works, and the markets, in order that it 
may use all these monopolies of service to cheapen the cost of living 
for the poor, and to remove the obstacles which at present stand 
in the way of their leading a human life. The policy of the Council 
has been strongly in favor of temperance. The chairman of the 
Council is a strong temperance man, and the majority of the members 
are deadly enemies of the saloon. I need hardly say that no saloon 
keeper was brought forward on either side as a candidate at the last 
election, nor if any had been would he have had the remotest chance of 
being elected. If these things can be done in London, why cannot 
they be done in Chicago by the labor unions acting together "with the 
other moral and religious forces of the town ? 


































